Local look at ‘Fiber for Farms’ progress

In the Quad Cities, three major rural areas report major improvements to current broadband internet offerings. Future is now in North Scott Central Scott Telephone, Eldridge, plans to finish construction of a fiber-to-the-home upgrade in early 2023 to its growing base of operations. Once that work is completed, the 120-year-old company’s aggressive improvement plans move […]

In the Quad Cities, three major rural areas report major improvements to current broadband internet offerings.

Future is now in North Scott

Central Scott Telephone, Eldridge, plans to finish construction of a fiber-to-the-home upgrade in early 2023 to its growing base of operations.

Once that work is completed, the 120-year-old company’s aggressive improvement plans move to neighboring Parkview and Long Grove, as well as the more rural areas of their exchange in northern Scott County. “We plan on taking fiber-to-the-home to every resident that we serve by the end of 2024,” said Mark Harvey, the new president and CEO of Central Scott and CS Technologies. “We started early in 2022 before I was back, and by 2024, we will have replaced nearly every line and every piece of cable in our exchange. So, we’ll basically rebuild the whole thing. We will directionally bore and plow all new fiber or all new cables in the ground for our whole exchange. “What we consider in Iowa the true rural areas are the farmhouses, and everyone in our exchange will have fiber-to-the-home. Our current customers have broadband, it’s just the increased (1 Gigabit) speeds that they’re starting to demand.” Central Scott is delivering with $4.2 million in help from the sixth round of state broadband grants, which were awarded in September 2021. More than 5,000 customers are benefiting, he added. “We’re talking a lot of miles — and a lot of money,” Mr. Harvey said, noting the combination of matching dollars and rising costs make the total investment much larger. “A majority of our rural build is due thanks to the state program. But we’ve also got more than the rural (area), which is more expensive than the $4.2 million.” However, whatever the price-tag, Mr. Harvey said the company decided revamping the entire system was well worth it long before his return in November after 19 years away in the service of other companies. “This community is not only home to me, but home to all the employees here to see it grow,” Mr. Harvey said, ticking off the positives. “Plus, if we want to continue to see houses built, more and more people are working from home. If we also want to see businesses locate here, we need to do this,” he added.. “Fiber is 100% the best way to deliver broadband right now. I’ve come to the point where I say nothing is future proof, but fiber will take us a very, very long time into the future. Electronics on each end will just need to be upgraded, but that’s the less expensive part than the actual boring of the lines and putting the fiber in the ground.”  Added Mr. Harvey: “So, if we don’t do it, competition will eat around the edges, whether it’s a wireless or a coax or another way to deliver bandwidth. So as a business, we not only see this as a key to survive, but also just doing the right thing for the communities we love.”

Dual solution in Henry County

In the northeastern tip of the Illinois Quad Cities, $12 million has been invested to build a 100% “Fiber-to-the-Premises” (FTTP) network throughout the communities of Atkinson, Annawan, Cambridge, Cleveland and the Wolf Road corridor between Interstate 80 and Geneseo. Geneseo Communications, Cambridge Telcom, and Henry County Telephone Company launched the project in early 2022 with financial support from the Henry County Board and the communities involved.

In addition, four towers have been erected to deliver a fixed wireless network to the most rural locations in the county, said Mike McClain, CEO of the three companies. Construction timelines are on target, and the project is expected to be completed in early 2023, said the companies’ spokesperson Kay Croegaert. “We have been working tirelessly to expand our network within these communities,” Mr. McClain said in a released statement. “The proliferation of broadband will have a huge economic impact allowing county leadership to attract new business and improve the quality of life for our residents. “As the federal government is encouraging public-private partnerships to expand broadband, this alliance between our companies, the county and communities just makes sense,” he added. “We look forward to continuing our work with county and community leaders to provide services that vastly surpass those of existing providers, helping build our communities into even more competitive places to live, work and play.” Mr. McClain’s nearly 130-year-old companies invested more than $9 million in conjunction with $3 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) support from Henry County and each participating community to build both the fiber and fixed wireless networks. Residents and businesses within these communities will have access to fully symmetrical speeds up to 1 Gigabit per second with unlimited data use, according to a joint news release from the companies. When completed, the project brings fiber internet service to more than 5,600 Henry County homes, and approximately 13,000 residents, the release adds. More than 1,600 homes in the most rural parts of the county — and approximately 3,600 citizens — will have access to fixed wireless speeds of 25 Megabit down and 3 Megabit up, the companies said. “Due to basic physics, fixed wireless is not as robust as fiber to the home, but it is much better internet service for the most rural locations than they can get anywhere else right now,” Mr. McClain said, pointing to the current economic barriers to running fiber to the most remote farms. “Unless you’re going to have $10,000-per-home in subsidies, the economics just don’t support running fiber to the farms right now. But we have provided a fixed wireless service that is very robust and serves most every farm’s needs.” Village of Cambridge Administrator Steve Brown hailed the project as a “game-changer.” “As our community continues to grow, it is vital that we can provide fast, reliable and affordable fiber optic internet,” Mr. Brown explained in a prepared statement. “At no time has that been more apparent than during the last two years when learning and remote work made the need for increased broadband access even more apparent. High-speed fiber internet will increase technological capabilities for residents and businesses throughout the village.” And that is simply good business, agreed the village presidents in both Atkinson (Ken Tabor) and Annawan (Tim Wise). “Community-wide access to a fiber-optic network is a multi-faceted economic driver,” Mr. Wise said in echoing the thoughts of Mr. Tabor. Geneseo Communications began expanding its fiber network in 2021 with work that has been completed in parts of Coal Valley and throughout the City of Geneseo. To learn more about the current progress, visit fibermefast.com. “Once complete,” Henry County Economic Development Director Jim Kelly said in a released statement, “this will position us leaps and bounds ahead of most counties within the state of Illinois.”

Build coming to Mercer County

The quaint rural communities south of the Illinois Metro Quad Cities — either along U.S. 67 or bisected in the middle of Mercer County by Illinois Route 17 — are looking to experience the fastest speeds on the information superhighway by 2028. Four local internet service providers — the telephone companies in New Windsor, Viola and Reynolds, as well as Galesburg’s Nova Cablevision — are partnering with the Mercer County Board to upgrade broadband by bringing 70% fiber coverage to the area. Each company was represented at a strategy meeting Thursday, Dec. 15, where plans were discussed to begin construction as early as 2023 — contingent on this spring’s Round 3 grant application with Connect Illinois.

“That’s the hope,” said Kasi Henshaw, who as an economic development consultant for the county board is in charge of the effort. “We will ask for the whole buildout — and we’ll have some matching dollars to bring to the table. But we’re going to ask for a majority of support from this grant program.”  The upgrade’s estimated cost a couple of years ago was $18 million, but because of inflation on fiber-optic cables and construction costs, the internet service providers have told Ms. Henshaw to double that price-tag. “Federal money is out there, too, but we don’t qualify for a lot of it,” Ms. Henshaw said soon after the Dec. 15 planning meeting. “But we’re hoping that this money becomes available.”  In hopes of landing those BEAD program funds, she said the county’s planning group is in the process of challenging the Federal Communications Commission coverage maps for broadband. “I was able to secure an Elite American Fellow full-time, so she is focusing on challenging the accuracy of the federal map,” said Ms. Henshaw, noting less than half of the 70% goal is currently served by fiber. “We’re finding that they’re tagging locations that are being served with Internet and there is not even a house there — it’s in the middle of a cornfield. It makes us look like we’re better served than what we are, which hurts us in a grant application.” Unless Mercer County receives more funding than hoped, the current coverage plan includes 30% fixed wireless, she added. NextLink, a non-local ISP, brings the requisite technology to deliver to the most rural farms. “So, that’s going to allow us to really focus on that 70% fiber buildout,” said Ms. Henshaw. At one point, the county thought about building the infrastructure and leasing it out as a revenue source. However, the plan eventually changed to build with the help of small local ISPs in an effort to grow their businesses, too. “We have larger regional and national providers competing here, too,” Ms. Henshaw said, ticking off the likes of Mediacom, T-Mobile and Frontier. “We could go and get the grant money for them, but our county board is prioritizing not just broadband, but in how we build from within and then grow out. “Thankfully, our local ISPs are willing to take the risk. That’s the coolest part of this whole story is that we are all coming together for the common good of our neighbors and communities,” she said. “To have four competitors at the same table talking about collaboration — ‘Do you want to take this road? OK, we’ll take this road.’ — I just think that level of cooperation to make everything better for everybody is really cool.”  The current plan is far more expansive than the plans hatched by Mercer County Better Together (MCBT) when the Aledo-based non-profit economic development group was leading broadband improvements from 2018 to the middle of 2021. “I laugh at it now because we’re so far beyond that,” said Kyle McEwen, MCBT executive director. “But at that point, the idea was ‘What if by breaking the county into townships, we could help establish a ‘fiber hub’ somewhere in each township for public usability. Whether it be a township building or fire station or library — some place where you could walk in and use high-speed internet and not have to travel 30-45 minutes one way to get it.”

Broadband now essential

The COVID-19 pandemic altered those plans significantly, though, with remote education the most glaring deficiency revealed, Ms. Henshaw said. Mr. McEwen also found it helped to be another government entity to qualify for Illinois government funding. So, the Mercer County Board took over in mid-2021, hired Ms. Henshaw and used a portion of its $2.9 million in ARPA funds for seed money and administrative costs. “We learned from COVID, when it comes to infrastructure, we’re behind and to nobody’s fault,” Ms. Henshaw said, noting the additional time it is taking to play catch up. “Part of that is for lack of want, because a lot of what makes your rural communities the charming, safe places that we love is the fact that we aren’t plugged in 24/7. The remoteness is the charm to a lot of us that live here and grew up here like me and my husband. I have friends all over the world and when they visit, they remark how it’s so calm and quiet and gets you back to nature. “But while broadband was maybe a luxury you had before the pandemic, afterward it has become an essential,” she said.