During an update as part of Wednesday's commission meeting, Commissioner Sean Sikora said he recently toured a portion of the county turned on through a joint project with Frontier Communications.
"We were out in the Halleck Road area, the Gladestown Road area and the Grafton Road area, and they showed me where the connections came in and where they're hitting, " he said. "So far, they already have 70 households that have signed up."
The project in question saw the commission put up $791, 421 (or 83%) of a $953, 519 undertaking to install just over 11 miles of fiber to connect some 80 unserved and underserved locations. The expansion also makes connections possible for another 170 locations in the area.
All told, the commission dedicated approximately $8 million of its $20.6 million American Rescue Plan Act dollars to leverage more than $20 million in broadband expansion by partnering with Internet service providers Comcast and Frontier on five deployment projects — one with Frontier, four with Comcast.
The largest of the public /private endeavors was announced in June 2024, when the commission provided just under $6 million to pull in an $11.84 million investment from Comcast to connect more than 2, 100 homes and businesses. While that project will hit areas across the county, it has a particular emphasis on the western end, which has the greatest number of dark zones.
Comcast also has smaller projects specific to areas of Stewarts Run, River Road and Gandalf Road (Snake Hill).
It was previously explained that many of these projects should start wrapping up by spring.
"They're moving along, " Sikora said. "[Comcast] is telling us that they're going to have contacts actually coming online. It's not going to be something where they wait until the whole project is done before they start getting people connected. I hope this Frontier success will help push that along."
While initially focused on just getting service to parts of the county, Sikora said the long-term effect will be better, more affordable access for everyone.
"I was talking to them about Frontier doing some expansion in the Suncrest area. I know that's predominantly a Comcast area. So, that in itself will give our citizens choice and start driving some of these costs down," Sikora said. "We're seeing a lot of these pressures that we expected once we started getting more of these areas connected. You create a few trunk lines, or you create a few inroads for an area to be connected, and you eventually start creating competition, so that's all good stuff."
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