Liberty Communications has secured $71.54 million in government subsidy funding to deploy high-speed broadband to 914,000 locations in Puerto Rico and Puerto Rico Telephone Co. is getting $55.56 million to do the same.

Related: FCC Hands Out First 5G-Specific USF Funds

Together, said the FCC Monday (Nov. 2), the pair, winning bidders in the second stage of the FCC's Uniendo a Puerto Rico Fund for high-cost support, will provide access to broadband of at least 100 mbps to 1.2 million locations, almost a third of that at least 1 gig, which means the entirety of Puerto Rico will have access to at least 100 Mbps, said the FCC.

Related: Liberty Latin America Completes Puerto Rico Purchase

"I’m very pleased with the outcome of the Uniendo a Puerto Rico Fund’s Stage 2 Competitive Process,” said FCC chairman Ajit Pai in a statement. “The Fund will bring modern, resilient broadband service of at least 100 Mbps to every location in Puerto Rico—each and every one. As most people know, the island has suffered so much devastation to communications infrastructure from hurricanes in recent years, and even before that, connectivity was a challenge for many."

About three days after its networks went dark, NBCUniversal Media said it has reached an agreement to return its channels to Liberty Puerto Rico customers immediately.

Telemundo, NBC Puerto Rico and 13 other channels went dark to Liberty Puerto Rico on April 5 after the parties could not reach a carriage agreement. Among the channels that went dark to Liberty Puerto Rico customers were CNBC, CNBC World, Bravo, E!, MSNBC, NBCSN, NBC Universo, Punto2, Oxygen, Universal Kids, SYFY, Golf Channel and USA .

“Today’s agreement really puts the customer first and brings back channels that they love,” said Liberty Latin America VP and chief programming officer Stephane David in a press release. “We are proud of our longstanding partnership with NBCUniversal and look forward to continuing to provide our customers with high-quality content from all of our partners.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“Liberty Cablevision is an important distribution partner and NBCUniversal is pleased to have reached a distribution agreement that will benefit customers in Puerto Rico,” said SVP NBCUniversal Content Distribution Matt Schnaars in a press release. “Telemundo in particular has a special bond with the people of Puerto Rico and we are pleased our quality entertainment, news and sports will be available to Liberty subscribers.”

Liberty Puerto Rico, a unit of Liberty Global that serves about 250,000 subscribers, is putting a new twist on the cloud-based interface in the form of a “Social Content Navigator” that presents a slate of live TV channels based on their popularity using near real-time viewership data.

The UI, which the operator is running on ActiveVideo’s CloudTV platform, presents up to eight of the most popular eight channels at once in mosaic form using viewership data that is collected and tabulated every five minutes. As that data is collected, the platform renders the UI in the proverbial cloud and stitches it into the MPEG video stream, meaning it can run on the operator's full base of deployed QAM-only boxes.

In this case, operator and ActiveVideo have built it to run on its systems based on both the Cisco Systems and Arris/Motorola platform, and on some boxes that have been in the field for several years, some as long as a decade.

The operator has been testing the UI for about three weeks and currently has it in front of about 100 friendlies. Under the phased deployment plan, the intension is to roll it out to more homes in the coming months and have it available to the MSO’s entire base by the end of the year, Waldo Hooker, Liberty Puerto Rico’s vice president of product and strategy, said.

The way the system is designed, users can scroll through additional pages that present mosaic views of the next eight most popular shows, again based on viewership data, all the way through to the end of Liberty Puerto Rico’s full live TV lineup of more than 300 channels.

In addition to presenting a broad view of the most viewed channels, the operator and ActiveVideo have built the UI to present more personalized, trending mosaics based on specific genres,  including family-friendly programming. The UI can also be set up to show only the most popular channels available in HD.

A key aim is to help customers get more value out of the lineup and help them find channels that they might not normally view. “We want customers to go outside of their comfort zone,” Hooker said.

And the operator believes the new UI will give it a differentiator to wield against competitors in the market, which include DirecTV, Dish Network.

While the system will allow Liberty Puerto Rico to deliver this fancy UI across its full subscriber base, it does cost some bandwidth. In fact, the operator has nailed up dedicated QAM capacity just for the UI app. “We are measuring the concurrency and use very carefully to make sure the experience is as good as possible,” Hooker said.

The Social Content Navigator is Liberty Puerto Rico’s first application on the ActiveVideo platform. The MSO might also use it for video-on-demand apps and perhaps a “full guide” sometime later, Hooker said.

And expect more tie-ins between the vendor and Liberty Global, which operates extensively in Europe. Last fall, Liberty Global announced it would use ActiveVideo’s CloudTV product to deliver its Horizon user interface to set-tops and other types of connected devices.

ActiveVideo is also working with Ziggo of the Netherlands (Liberty Global is in the process of buying the remaining interest in the Dutch MSO), Cablevision Systems, Time Warner Cable, Deutsche Telekom and Charter Communications, among others. Comcast has trialed ActiveVideo for a VOD interface but hasn’t announced a broader relationship.