What is Broadband?
Broadband is high-speed internet to your home or business. South Central Power will be deploying fiber optic to the home as our technology of choice. Fiber to the home is the fastest, most reliable, and most capable form of broadband.
How Fast?
South Central Power’s fiber offering will provide the fastest speeds of any provider — with minimum speeds of 100 megabits per second for both uploading and downloading, and even gigabit speed in some areas. With these internet speeds, you’ll be able to stream TV or video, enhance your home and business security, enjoy gaming, work or attend school remotely, stay in touch with family and friends over video calls, and even participate in virtual medical appointments.
How Much?
We are in the process of developing our pricing policies, service offerings, packages, and tiers, but we expect pricing to begin at around $85 per month for basic service. Low-income households may qualify for financial assistance in paying for broadband services. Learn more from the USAC Affordable Connectivity Program.
When?
Design, engineering, and fieldwork are underway in some of our communities now, and we will be starting construction first in the far west and far east portions of our state. Construction will begin later this year, and we anticipate connecting the first members to our fiber network in early 2024.
Where?
Grant funding from BroadbandOhio will allow us to do an initial deployment to 13,615 households in parts of 14 counties, including portions of Adams, Belmont, Brown, Carroll, Clermont, Fayette, Harrison, Highland, Jefferson, Monroe, Noble, Pike, Ross and Scioto counties. Note: not all members in these counties will have access to our broadband offering in this initial deployment.
Though our projects will begin in the far east and far west portions of the state, we anticipate eventually being able to serve members in other areas, including central Ohio.
We’re interested in your feedback about broadband. Take this short survey to help us serve you.
Need Broadband but Your Community Isn’t Listed?
South Central Power is entering the broadband business with financial support from BroadbandOhio and is obligated to prioritize service to areas identified by them in their grant award. Once we begin construction on our network though, we anticipate being able to serve additional communities as we go. We will also be pursuing additional sources of state and federal funding for broadband in underserved areas.
You can also help the Federal Communications Commission as they seek to better understand the lack of broadband available in rural areas. You can check the National Broadband Map to see what services are available in your area, and if you believe the map to be inaccurate, you can notify the FCC which can hopefully address the need in your area.
Watch the video below to learn more.
If I don’t need broadband, what does this mean for me?
All South Central Power members will benefit from the broadband deployment. In addition to fiber-to-the-home service, South Central Power will use fiber to connect critical infrastructure, like substations and automated devices in the field. This will result in many benefits, from faster outage restoration times to improved power quality and even lower costs of energy. Additionally, once more consumers have broadband at home, we can offer new smart grid programs, providing you with ways to save on your energy bill through different rate structures and more.
What can I do in my community?
You can spread the word about South Central Power’s broadband project and encourage your friends and neighbors to receive broadband updates like this one. We encourage you to share this update on social media; if you are part of a local Facebook group in an underserved area, you can add a post about our Broadband Updates to help us spread the word and generate more interest in your area.
Share the broadband update by copy and pasting:https://www.southcentralpower.com/news-releases/broadband-update-may-2023/
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for future broadband Updates.