Additional residences covered in broadband agreement
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Oconee County Administrator Justin Kirouac presented an amendment to the county’s broadband agreement with Charter Communications at the Feb. 27 Oconee County Board of Commissioners meeting to include 211 addresses identified as unserved outside of phase one. The BOC on Tuesday approved the amended agreement.
The amendment is to the November 2021 agreement with Charter, which offers broadband services through Spectrum, for the grant application to include the additional 211 addresses, described in the document as phase two.
Each phase two address will cost $2,500 for a total county subsidy of $527,500, and Charter has until Dec. 31, 2024, to complete it.
The original agreement estimated 1,377 unserved addresses, but Charter anticipated finding additional addresses once out in the community, said Kirouac.
“Within the agreement…I would anticipate they’re also addresses still not contemplated within it, so that allows the county to go to Charter for grants at a tiered rate depending on how many passings occur throughout the course of the project,” Kirouac said.
The county subsidized $1.716 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds for Charter to expand broadband service to 1,716 addresses during phase one.
“We’re providing an…economic grant to incentivize Charter/Spectrum to build out their infrastructure that is not like a direct contract with Charter,” Kirouac explained. “We’re not in partnership with them; we’re providing them an incentive, and it’s clearly worked because we’ve been trying to get this for a long time. And last year has been pretty successful.”
Charter received $20.4 billion from the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund adopted in 2019 to bring internet access and increased internet speeds to rural areas, according to the FCC.
According to a reporting from retired journalism professor Lee Becker, the RDOF grant expanded broadband to 754 addresses mainly in the southern part of the county.
“This was part of what’s called a synergy build with their RDOF, which is a federally subsidized portion of the southern part of the county,” Kirouac said.
Phase one is almost complete, and the RDOF is completed, Kirouac said.
Through Charter’s RDOF, Kirouac said they had until 2026 or 2027 to bring broadband to the addresses now hooked up, but by the county initiating the phase one grant application, Oconee jumped to the front of the line in the state.
The amended agreement will serve a total of 1,927 addresses for a subsidy of $2.243 million for phases one and two of the project, Kirouac said.
The project has brought Spectrum gigabit service to unserved areas in Oconee and provided broadband options such as Spectrum TV, Spectrum Mobile and Spectrum Voice.
The project has six phases where two Fiber Cabinets will be installed to deliver the broadband service.
“We are getting a lot of reports from the South end that they have been hooked up, and it’s working really well,” said BOC Chair John Daniell.
The Oconee Enterprise will report next week on a fiber internet regeneration facility that’s being built off Gober Road. The facility will to increase internet speeds directly from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to Atlanta, Georgia.