Communication System Upgrade Coming To Grant County

Grant County supervisors are ready to move forward with a nearly $16 million project to upgrade the county’s aging emergency communications system. County supervisors have unanimously approved the borrowing of up to $11 million to acquire land and construct 10 radio towers, as well as a contract with Marshalltown, Iowa, emergency communications company Racom to oversee the project. By locking in rates before the end of 2021, construction would cost about $8.7 million, but the supervisors added to the budget contingency funding and carryover expenses from previous phases of the project that included the construction of a communications tower in Lancaster. The project also includes a 172-mile loop of fiber-optic cables that will be located in the county and will accommodate broadband speeds of 80 gigabits per second. Construction would occur in stages, first targeting sites in Boscobel, Fennimore, Muscoda and Platteville, where the fiber is being installed first.