The Washington Island Electric Cooperative is preparing to deliver affordable fiber broadband access to long-neglected communities across Washington Island, Wisconsin. The first subscribers are expected to receive service sometime later this month, and the entire island is slated to be upgraded sometime around 2027.

With the cooperative partnering with Quantum Technologies on the fiber deployment, which began in April of 2021 and is expected to be finished by 2027, the first phase will connect key anchor institutions like the police department, schools, town hall, and the region’s visitor centers.

Currently, a single wireless microwave tower connects all island broadband, as locals painfully discovered during a nine-day 2019 outage. As members of the Washington Island Electric Cooperative await the new service, the only options available now are through Centurylink, Frontier DSL, traditional satellite, or next-gen satellite service like Starlink (assuming island residents can even get the service and afford its first month $710 service charge). 

Obtaining better island connectivity has been a long standing battle. The island had flirted with broadband over powerline (BPL) broadband tech, but the technology’s inherent interference issues — and a series of tornadoes that ravaged the area in 2011 — caused the ISP providing the service, Broadband Electric Communications (IBEC), to shut down operations in 2012. 

Washington Island Electric Cooperative aims to connect roughly 225 homes or so a year on the 125 square mile island until the project is completed in 2027. Once completed, the island’s approximately 700 local residents will have access to symmetrical speeds of 100 Megabits per second (Mbps) for $59.95 a month, and symmetrical speeds of 1 Gigabit per second for upload/download speeds of 100 megabytes per second for $89.95 a month.

“These are not ‘teaser’ rates and should remain stable so...

Over the past eighteen months, southeastern-Mississippi based Dixie Electric Power Association (Dixie EPA) has gone from presenting its initial buildout plans for a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network, all the way to connecting its 5,000th subscriber. Because of electric cooperatives like Dixie that are getting organized and prioritizing connectivity for their members, Mississippi is likely to become one of the states with the best rural connectivity within the next five years.

Founded in 1938 in Laurel, Mississippi, Dixie EPA’s present-day coverage area stretches across southeastern Mississippi in parts of Covington, Jasper, Jones, Clarke, Wayne, Perry, and Forrest counties. The cooperative provides electric service to 30,000 premises. 

In September 2020, about six months into the COVID-19 pandemic, Dixie began pre-registering subscribers for Internet service under the cooperative’s newly-created subsidiary, DE Fastlink. Dixie was part of a collective of electric cooperatives that had just received a recent state appropriation of $65 million in CARES Act funding for rural broadband deployment. The funding was administered under the Mississippi Electric Coop Broadband Covid Grant Program by Mississippi Public Utilities. Dixie planned to match in full its own $3.3 million award, which, according to the terms of the grant, had to be spent by the end of that year. 

The cooperative was one of fifteen in Mississippi to receive funding for a buildout. The state was a new leader in supporting cooperatively-run rural broadband; only a select few states decided to spend CARES funding on rural broadband, and Mississippi spent among the most. Of the $75 million in CARES funding it had designated for expanding connectivity, $65 million was awarded to electric cooperatives, while only $10 million was set aside for other types of providers. Of this $10 million, only $1.5 was actually used, because the state received very few grant applications...

Electric cooperatives illustrate the power that community-owned enterprises have to bring Internet access at scale to unconnected rural communities. Because of their work, states like Missouri (where 15 percent of all households only have access to broadband speeds slower than 100/20 Megabits per second, and only 38 percent have access to speeds of 100/100 Megabits per second or faster), will go from being among the least-connected states to one of those with the greatest connectivity in rural areas in coming years. 

An infusion of federal funding shows how publicly owned infrastructure can go farther and move faster. Ralls County Electric Cooperative (RCEC) serves as example in Missouri, building on its existing broadband infrastructure to further increase connectivity in one of the most connected counties in the state.

Closing the Gap

Ralls County, located in the northeastern part of the state, is one of three statewide to provide fiber or wireless Internet access to over 90 percent of residents in its service territory. With $1.3 million in funding from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) now in hand, RCEC is extending broadband access outside of its electric service area.  

RCEC’s initial fiber buildout began in 2010. By 2014, it was the first electric distribution cooperative in Missouri to have built fiber out to all 6,300 of its members. 70 percent of RCEC’s members currently subscribe to its fiber services. Through its wholly owned subsidiary, the cooperative offers five speed tiers. Speeds range from 50/10 Megabits per second for $50/month to 1 Gbps/15 Mbps for $100/month in select locations. 

Reaching Beyond its Electric Membership Footprint

The RDOF funding has allowed RCEC to extend its service area to “100 percent of the addresses in areas along U.S. 24, north of Mark Twain Lake, and areas on Highway 54 south of the Mark Twain Lake.” RCEC Manager and CEO Lynn Hodges expects to reach half of these areas...

Fiber-to-the-home service is on its way to three counties in Southeast Georgia. In July, the Midway-based Coastal Electric Cooperative and Darien Communications – a family owned telephone, cable TV, and Internet Service Provider – announced they were teaming up to build a $40 million fiber network. Once the initial network is up and running, 16,000 homes and businesses in the counties of Bryan, Liberty, and Long will have access to high-speed Internet service.

The partnership has given birth to a new co-op entity with Coastal Electric known as Coastal Fiber Inc., which will lease the infrastructure and begin offering retail broadband service as early as January 2022. Construction began this summer with phase one of the project slated to be rolled out over the next four years.

The new partnership will first target 9,800 homes in Bryan County, 6,200 in Liberty County, and 500 in Long County.

Phase 1 Focuses on Underserved County Residents

“The first phase goal is for customers in Liberty County to begin seeing availability in January 2022. The system will be built out in phases from that point with the total buildout by 2030. The service to Bryan and Long counties will be as we build out in phases. No dates for Bryan and Long have been determined yet,” Coastal Electric Communication Coordinator Bethany Akridge told the Savannah Morning News.

“The service in Bryan County, for example, depends on where you live. There is broadband available in the more populated areas because it is more profitable for companies,” Akridge said. “The reason the cooperative is involved is because there is a need, so we are stepping in to fill that need where those areas are not served or underserved.

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