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Success Stories

A mother and three daughters pose around a dining room table. There are lace curtains and blue wall in the background and some dishes on the table in the foreground.

“This is Home” – A Family Finds Their Forever Home in Calais, Maine

One of the first rooms Heather Gagne and her daughters began redecorating in their new home is the dining room, shown in the top photo. They have been busy repainting and making other updates. Raising a family in coastal Machias, Maine may sound lovely, but for Heather Gagne recent years proved stressful. There were few housing options in the Downeast community, and Heather was glad to find a rental home to…
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Use the filters below to find additional stories about how our programs have helped rural communities across the nation.

Search Results: 21 Stories
Two men stand next to a green sign that says Plateau

Rural Development Grant Helps ReConnect Rural New Mexicans

Over seventy-five years ago, a group of rural New Mexicans banded together to create Eastern New Mexico Rural Telephone Cooperative. The group wanted to provide telephone service to rural eastern New Mexico. The cooperative is now known as Plateau. Its cooperative area covers 25… [Read More]
New Mexico
BroadbandCooperativesHigh Speed InternetInfrastructure
man and woman stand next to each other with mountains in background

ReConnect Program Brings High-Speed Fiber Internet to Southeastern New Mexico

You might not expect to find high-speed internet in remote mountain areas with gravel roads, but you will soon find exactly that in southeastern New Mexico in the Peñasco Valley Telephone (PVT) Cooperative, Inc., service area.The large area that PVT covers is extremely rural.… [Read More]
New Mexico
BroadbandCooperativesHigh Speed Internet
Valley telecommunications store front

Valley Telecommunications extends network to provide high-speed internet

Valley Telecommunications has been providing its members in the Herreid area with quality service for nearly 70 years. The Cooperative strived to deliver the high speed, reliable internet service to its members across McPherson, Edmunds, and Campbell counties. When an… [Read More]
South Dakota
BroadbandGrantsHigh Speed InternetRural DevelopmentTelecommunications
Ryan Tanney, a worship pastor at a church in Pine Grove, California, stands in front of several screens, which are used to manage a live broadcast of Sunday services.

Making connections: bringing California’s rural central Sierra Nevada communities closer with high-speed internet

Mary West-Hutchinson, a real estate broker in West Point, California, was tired of commuting. She’d leave the tall rural pines of her home community and drive 80 minutes to the more densely populated Lodi for work. In addition, she was taking college courses, working toward her… [Read More]
California
BroadbandDisasterHigh Speed Internet
woman splicing line of fiber

ReConnect Program Brings Opportunity to Rural Nevada Town

Brenda Dela Torriente twines the lines of fiber with precision. Her brows are furrowed as her fingers find the ridges between the cords, working them at an astonishing speed. It's a painstaking process. For the town of Montello, Nevada, it's also a deeply important one. Those… [Read More]
Nevada
BroadbandHigh Speed Internet
A bearded man poses in front of a backdrop that says "GORiLLA LUBE" with industrial products on a table in front of him with orange labels.

Finding New Markets with USDA BioPreferred: Small Town Biobased Company has Outsized Impact on the Slopes and Ziplines of America

Scott and Kathie Lee are the founders of Gorilla Lube, based in Brownville, Maine. Scott Lee found his mission while still in college. At the time he worked for the Connecticut Department of Health inspecting public water supplies and… [Read More]
Maine
BiobasedBiopreferredBroadbandEntrepreneurMade in Rural AmericaManufacturing
Cartersville Volunteer Fire Department helmet

Broadband Provides Vital Lifeline for Protecting Lives and Property in Cartersville

Volunteer fire departments are an integral part of the communities they serve, carrying on a proud tradition of neighbor helping neighbor in times of trouble. Each member is committed to maintaining readiness to respond to every call, but those working in rural communities like… [Read More]
Virginia
BroadbandFirst Responders
Robert and Andrea Nickels in the Hardware Hills Vineyard tasting room.

Uncorking New Business Growth with Broadband

Hardware Hills Vineyard is located about five miles from downtown Scottsville but might well be in the middle of its namesake river when it comes to network connectivity. Owners Andrea and Rob Nickels spent their first 10 days on the property without internet and had to schedule… [Read More]
Virginia
BroadbandBusinessSmall Business
William French standing near produce in his farmers market.

Streamlining Farm Operations in Cumberland

William French’s family farm has been in continuous operation for more than a century, so each generation has had a front row seat for subtle shifts in the agricultural landscape of Central Virginia. Though a lot had changed since his great-great grandfather first grew tobacco… [Read More]
Virginia
BroadbandBusinessSmall Business
Worker installing fiber line on an existing electric pole.

Transforming Lives and Livelihoods One Connection at a Time

It’s no coincidence that the Central Virginia Electric Cooperative (CVEC) named their internet subsidiary after a small, luminescent insect. The parallels between the push to power rural homes in the 1930’s and the challenge of bringing broadband to remote areas of the state… [Read More]
Virginia
Broadband

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