The first customers will be connected in 1Q 2022. Washington EMC’s $54.5 million fiber network is expected to be completed within 3 years. “This is just the beginning for the thousands of rural families and businesses there who have never experienced the power and opportunity that comes with access to world-class fiber broadband.” We are working tirelessly to close the Digital Divide everywhere we can, and we are proud to partner with Washington EMC on this next step,” Conexon Partner Randy Klindt said. “Connect’s footprint across Georgia continues to grow. The electric cooperative is teaming up with Connect to launch and deploy a 3,000-mile fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network providing high-speed internet access to over 12,000 homes and businesses spanning 10 counties in central Georgia. KANSAS CITY, Mo., April 16, 2021 – Conexon Connect, the newly formed internet service provider created and managed by rural fiber-optic network design and construction management leader Conexon, has been selected by Washington EMC in Sandersville, Ga., to deliver reliable, affordable fiber broadband service for the cooperative’s members. This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Capitol Beat.Connect’s partnerships with Georgia cooperatives continue to increase, with opportunity to reach a collective 85,000 rural homes and businesses with fiber-to-the-home networks Shaw said 15 EMCs across Georgia are either forming partnerships with fiber-optic companies to expand broadband service or are working on feasibility studies that could lead to future projects. Last February, Conexon unveiled a $210 million project to serve all 80,000 customers of Central Georgia EMC and Southern Rivers Energy in all or parts of 18 counties. The Middle Georgia EMC project is the third Conexon has underway in the Peach State.Įarlier this month, Conexon and Washington EMC announced a $54.5 million plan to bring broadband to more than 12,000 homes in Baldwin, Emanuel, Glascock, Hancock, Jefferson, Johnson, Laurens, Warren, Washington and Wilkinson counties. “You need infrastructure for people to have job opportunities, in order to get education, in order to get today’s health care,” he said.Ĭonexon Connect will build a 1,900-mile fiber network providing high-speed Internet access to Middle Georgia EMC members in Dooly, Houston, Macon, Pulaski, Turner, Wilcox and Ben Hill counties. Jonathan Chambers, a partner with Conexon, said bringing broadband service to rural areas will help stem population losses those communities have suffered in recent years. “They deserve to be able to do the same things as kids in metro Atlanta.” “The pandemic has truly painted the ‘digital divide’ picture our kids are going through,” he said. ![]() While state and local policy makers have long recognized the need for expanding broadband connectivity in rural communities, the coronavirus pandemic has emphasized the point by forcing students out of classrooms to try to learn at homes without internet, said Jason Shaw, a member of the PSC representing South Georgia. Between them, the fiscal 2021 mid-year budget and the fiscal 2022 spending plan the General Assembly adopted during this year’s legislative session earmarked $30 million for rural broadband projects. The state is also stepping up the investment of public dollars in rural broadband. ![]() ![]() In December, the commission approved an offer by the EMCs to charge only $1 per year during the next six years for new pole attachments in rural areas lacking broadband service. Then last year, lawmakers approved a bill giving the state Public Service Commission (PSC) the task of deciding how much the EMCs could charge telecommunications providers for pole attachments. The General Assembly passed legislation two years ago clarifying in state law that electric membership cooperatives (EMCs) are legally permitted to attach Internet fiber to their utility poles. “Now, we’re introducing high-speed broadband.”Įxpanding deployment of broadband service in rural Georgia has been a bipartisan priority of the state’s political leaders. “We grew up with a party line telephone and one-channel TV,” Randy Crenshaw, president and CEO of Middle Georgia EMC, said during a ceremony in the Dooly County seat of Vienna announcing the project. The first customers will be connected as early as the first quarter of next year. The utility, which serves all or parts of seven counties, announced Tuesday it will invest $36.7 million with Kansas City-based Conexon Connect to bring high-speed Internet fiber to 100% of its members’ homes and businesses within two years. The 4,800 members of Middle Georgia EMC will be the latest to benefit from a series of broadband projects cropping up across rural Georgia.
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