Highland Telephone Cooperative Gains Gigabit Recognition

The NTCA-Rural Broadband Association this month awarded the Highland Telephone Cooperative (HTC) of Sunbright, Tennessee, its national certification as a “Gig-capable” provider, reports the Independent-Herald.

HTC serves Scott and Morgan counties in Tennessee and McCreary County in Kentucky and is now one of 85 Gig-certified company/cooperative providers in the nation. The certification recognizes rural communities that are at the cutting-edge of broadband technology, offering Internet service of up to at least 1 Gigabit per second (1,000 Megabits per second or Mbps). The association launched this national campaign in the fall of 2015. 

Years of Planning

HTC completed its $66 million fiber-optic network within the last year; 1 Gig capacity Internet service is available to all 16,5000 members reports the Independent-Herald.  The six-year project upgrades the cooperative’s old copper network. Highland Telephone CEO Mark Patterson: 

"This gigabit certification caps off years of careful planning, investing and building a brand-new fiber network in our area...All along, we knew our commitment was worth the effort so our friends and families in this area could keep their rural lifestyle without sacrificing world-class connectivity."

The upgrade included more than 2,700 miles of fiber by the cooperative's crews and contractors — enough to stretch from Highland's office in Sunbright to Vancouver in British Columbia, the Independent-Herald reported.

"Our area lacks interstates and many economic advantages that other communities enjoy, and we've suffered through some extremely high unemployment in recent years," Patterson said. "An asset like a gigabit-capable network can be our competitive edge when it comes to bringing in industry and growing existing businesses."

85 Gig Networks

To date, the NTCA-Rural Broadband Association has recognized 85 companies and cooperatives from 26 states as Gig-capable. The list includes 26 recipients in Iowa and six from Minnesota. Among the Minnesota honorees is Paul Bunyan Communications headquartered in Bemidji.  

Across the nation, more and more telecom cooperatives are helping bring high-speed connectivity to rural America. They are filling the void created by large Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who generally consider it financially unattractive to make major broadband investments in sparsely populated areas.

The latest FCC annual broadband progress report estimates 34 million Americans, or about 10 percent of the nation’s populace, lacks access to 25 Mbps down/3 Mbps up service, the agency’s current definition of what constitutes basic broadband service. Those numbers likely understate the true situation, however, as they are based on form 477 data provided by ISPs and national providers often overstate their coverage based on census blocks. For more on Form 477 data, check out episode #224 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast. Christopher interviewed our Research Associate H.R. Trostle, who studied mountains of data for her report on connectivity in North Carolina.

Cooperatives Work!

In October, we noted that it was National Cooperative Month and highlighted a long list of cooperatives now providing next-century Internet connectivity. We expect that list to grow as rural communities recognize the value of cooperatives in bringing better connectivity to rural areas.