On a “good day,” the internet connection speed at Hebron Christian School in Pheba reaches 3 megabits per second, Headmaster Bobby Eiland said. On a “really good day,” it pulls about 6.
By March, when the school hooks up to FASTnet broadband, it will be hundreds of times faster.
“It will be like going from a dirt road to a four-lane highway,” Eiland said.
Hebron Christian sits in one of the areas included in FASTnet’s pilot program, which covers west Clay, northeast Choctaw and north Noxubee counties — a small way for 4-County Electric Power Association to “test the waters” for building out a far more ambitious broadband infrastructure project, CEO Brian Clark said.
But news 4-County announced Friday all but assured the association’s goal of offering high-speed internet to its entire electric membership.
4-County secured more than $35 million from a Rural Development Opportunity Fund auction held in late 2020, according to a press release it issued Friday. It will receive the funds in equal installments over 10 years.
The auction win, along with $6 million in state grant funds for the ongoing pilot program, makes up more than one-third of the $110 million 4-County will need for a full broadband buildout. Clark said those funds, along with what 4-County expects in customer revenue over the first five to 10 years, should be enough to pay for the project.
The Federal Communications Commission offered $16 billion nationwide last year through the RDOF auction. 4-County joined a consortium to enter the auction, Clark said, anonymously providing details and cost estimates for its broadband project. Mississippi projects secured $495 million from the auction, the second highest for any state, trailing only California.
Another RDOF auction, planned for this year, will offer another $4 billion.
A 2019 state law allowed rural electric cooperatives to offer broadband internet to its customers. Since then, the nonprofit 4-County has conducted two feasibility studies and created FASTnet, a for-profit subsidiary, to handle its internet service. The targeted pilot program began late last year — offering packages with speeds from 200 MBPS to 1 gigabit per second to roughly 2,700 customers. Since then, 4-County has hung 300 miles of fiber, Clark said, and has connected 80 customers so far.
Those customers, from what Clark has heard, “seem pretty happy with it.”
“At first, we were nervous to get into this, because we’re good at the electric side and we want to make sure the services we offer are at least at the same level as our electric service,” Clark told The Dispatch. “We’ve been building confidence as we’ve gone through this process, and we’re convinced it’s the right thing to do. It’s what Mississippi needs.”
4-County has nearly 50,000 electric customers, including 37,000 residential, in its nine-county coverage area — which includes rural portions of Lowndes, Oktibbeha, Clay and Noxubee counties.
Clark said the next step is structuring a strategic timeline for when the service will be available to certain areas. It could take up to four years to build it out to everyone, he said.
“I figure pressure will ramp up on us from people who are wanting it, and that may speed up the process,” Clark said. “Everybody is not going to get it right away, though, so we want people to be patient with us.”
Clark encouraged 4-County customers to visit www.4cfastnet.com to see if their address qualifies for the pilot program. Even if they don’t, he said, the company is keeping a log of those visitors to see where the greatest levels of immediate interest is.
That will determine, in part, where FASTnet will build out next, Clark said.
4-County will borrow the funds for the buildout, Clark said, and pay it back with RDOF and grant funds, as well as customer revenue. Feasibility studies indicated 4-County needs 30-percent participation for broadband to pay for itself, a key factor since the electric rates cannot be used to subsidize FASTnet. Clark, however, believes 4-County will “do better than 30 percent,” which might pay dividends for all its electric customers.
“Ongoing cashflow will allow this to pay for itself,” Clark said. “The electric company will not subsidize the subcompany, but the subcompany, when it is profitable, can help the ratepayers of 4-County.”
Meanwhile, Eiland can hardly wait for March. Hebron Christian has held in-person classes since August, but a few months last spring, after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, teachers were offering virtual lessons from their homes where they had better internet connection than the school.
Even now, some students take an online Spanish class at school that “spends a lot of time buffering.” Broadband, he said, will immensely improve classroom teaching, billing and so much more.
“We’re excited about it,” Eiland said. “It’s going to be great for our school.”
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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