by Rick Lemonds, president & CEO of South Central Power Company
It’s been a busy summer of fairs, festivals, and events across Ohio, and our staff has enjoyed being out in so many communities and interacting with many of you. We love to hear from you about your questions and concerns regarding your cooperative. Many of you have had the same question: “When is broadband coming?” Since we announced our broadband project during our annual meeting last year, there’s been tremendous excitement across our service territory. And we know that members lacking reliable, competitively priced high-speed internet can’t wait for the opportunity to connect to the fiber-to-the-home network we are constructing in the far eastern and western portions of our service area. We, too, are excited about becoming one of the state’s newest and best broadband providers. Our network will provide fiber-to-the-home, which features the best broadband speeds and reliability available in the industry. But unfortunately, the time it takes us to stand up the network and provide broadband to our first members will be measured in months, not weeks or days.
Like most projects of this nature, constructing the fiber network takes time and we have come to appreciate the many moving parts behind the scenes and the patience it will take to see the project through. When you build a home, you often start with a green field and finish with a place you can break bread with friends and family, and lay your head at night to sleep. It’s an incredible transformation that’s life-changing, and in that way, we expect our broadband network will deliver similar positive changes. But both require patience and diligence to see them through.
The homebuilder may need to start with designs and plans, then permits, excavating, and maybe a new well or septic system. A builder does a lot of the work, but needs specialists like plumbers and electricians to get the job done. Finally, paint, carpet, and appliances come into place before the home is ready for its occupants.
Building a broadband network is obviously different — but similarly, there are many steps and parties involved in the process along the way. Most of the fiber network will be installed on the existing overhead lines that are owned by the cooperative. We have the funding and financing in place to build out the network in the eastern and western portions of our territory and plan to reach as many as 20,000 members. We have a team of experts on board, from engineers who are designing the network to a deployment and construction management team with decades of experience. By the time you read this, we will likely have selected a contractor to construct our network, and ordered the electronics and other equipment needed for the initial phases of the project. We are planning to commence construction by Oct. 1, build almost 300 miles, and initiate rigorous testing by the end of 2023. We expect to begin connecting subscribers by next spring. This is a phased approach, and after we complete one area and those consumers become eligible to sign up for the service, our team will pick up and move to another area, connecting a few thousand consumers at each stop, and continuously repeating the process until we have connected everyone we can.
We are just as excited as you are, but we do want people to understand it will take time to provide this new service, and we won’t be able to deploy it to everyone all at the same time. In fact, our initial deployment of broadband service will reach about 20,000 households in parts of 14 counties in the far east and far west areas of our service territory, including communities around Hillsboro and Barnesville. We continue to work on securing additional grant funding and financing to extend the network into the other communities that also suffer from a lack of quality high-speed internet.
One thing I do want to share — even though not all members will receive broadband at the same time, even if we don’t reach your home — it won’t be long after we get started before all our members will benefit from the network in some way. The process of building the network will allow us to connect our substations with high-speed communications, which will help us detect and restore outages faster and with greater accuracy than ever before. Over time, the network will provide additional benefits too, and we remain as committed as ever to our mission for the past 86 years — to add value to the lives of our members through the delivery of safe and dependable service.
If you are interested in broadband and haven’t already done so, please visit our website to sign up for broadband email updates or give our office a call. We will keep you informed as we go, and hope to be serving your area as soon as possible.
From the August 2023 issue of Ohio Cooperative Living