EDITORS NOTE: AT&T has reached out to The Times to state AT&T did not object to Cyber Broadband Inc.’s request.

With broadband internet increasingly becoming a “need to have” rather than a “nice to have,” state and federal governments are providing grants to incentivize the expansion of broadband service into rural areas.

When Alabama set up its Broadband Accessibility Fund several years ago, there were only a handful of applicants for the grant money. When Jay Fuller, CEO and owner of Cyber Broadband went looking for grants to help with a broadband project his company was going to do at Smith Lake, he discovered the grants and successfully applied for one. At the time, his company was one of nine applicants. This past year, his company again applied for a grant from the state and was one of 55 applications.

With the most recent grant request, Cyber Broadband is seeking funding for a project to install fiber around the Baileyton, Joppa, Hulaco and Etha areas. Residents in the area have long-sought high speed internet, and supported Fuller’s grant application with letters of support.

Cyber Broadband’s original request filed at the end of 2019 was denied because two other telecommunications companies objected to the project going into territory they say they already provide service to. The companies are not identified, but both AT&T and Spectrum have service in the area. Fuller said he adjusted the grant application to request funding to run 55 miles of fiber past 610 houses, although the overall project will be much larger than that.

The status of the grant is not certain yet, but Fuller said his company is planning on running fiber regardless.

“If we have some of the state money to help us, we can move a lot faster,” he said. “If we can only use our own money, we can only move as fast as we can grow.”

Rep. Randall Shedd, who represents the area, said the issue of rural broadband internet is finally being addressed. “When I first got in the legislature I addressed this issue with my colleagues and it seems like it’s taken a while, but it’s been a grass-roots issue,” he said. “It’s the people who don’t have it, or have slow or no internet, that’s really reaching out to us for it to do whatever we can.”

Last year, Shedd pushed for the passage of legislation that gave electric companies more authority to provide internet access and added funding to the state grant program.

“We had a tremendous battle last year getting those bills passed,” said Shedd. “It seems some [companies] don’t want to make moves but they don’t want anybody else to either.”

But Shedd is optimistic, pointing to the vote by members of the Joe Wheeler Electric Cooperative in Morgan and Lawrence counties to create a fiber-optic network that will provide high speed internet to its members. The project is expected to cost between $95 to $110 million and take five years to complete.

“Progress is being made,” said Shedd. “It’s somewhat slow, but progress is being made in getting broadband to areas where there’s no broadband or slow broadband.”

One example of an electric cooperative that has made a difference is the Tombigsbee Electric Co-op, which serves areas of Marion, Lamar and Fayette counties. The co-op’s FreedomFiber is connecting 300 customers a month to broadband internet.

President and CEO Steve Foshee said the cooperative originally looked at providing internet services back in 2007 and 2008, but fully committed to the project in 2016.

“Our target was to take fiber optic cable into every home in every area in which we served,” he said. The cost: roughly $50 million.

He said the goals weren’t just to get internet into homes. It was to affect change in the rural areas, particularly in the areas of education, economic development, e-medicine and quality of life.

“How do you create jobs in rural Alabama if you cannot have a communications system to do it?” he asked. “It’s impossible today. And it must be robust and it must be very, very competitive with the world.”

The project launched in 2017 and the co-op was ready to take on all the costs itself. “If we got a grant, it was going to be great. But we also had to plan that we wouldn’t,” said Foshee.

The co-op did receive grants, including one from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) ReConnect program. The announcement drew national attention and USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue came to make the announcement of the $3 million grant.

Since then, “We’ve spent $24 million so far, we’ve built over a thousand miles of fiber cable, we’ve connected about 6,500 homes and businesses,” he said. “There’s no telling how many jobs we’ve preserved by having it so people could work from their homes post-COVID-19.”

Congressman Robert Aderholt chaired the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee at the time the first funding was put in the USDA ReConnect program. “He’s been a fantastic advocate for this,” said Foshee. “He’s a huge proponent of getting broadband in to change rural America.”

Aderholt said the federal government is funding the grants with the realization of how important broadband is to rural America.

“For a while now, you’ve had two Americas. You’ve had one America that has broadband internet and you have another part of America that has not had broadband internet,” he said. “With today’s technology, the way the digital world is going, it’s almost unthinkable that you would have parts of this country that does not have access to broadband internet.”

He compares it to the issue that created America’s rural electric cooperatives: getting electricity to homes in the rural areas. “Where we are today, could you think of someone having a business without electricity, trying to operate a business, and, in the same way, could you think of them trying to operate without broadband internet?” he said.

Foshee also sees the issue of rural broadband as similar to the co-op’s early history, when the federal government created electric cooperatives to deliver electricity to rural areas. “If you are a for-profit and you only serve where it makes economic sense, then you’re going to leave a number of families out,” he said. “That problem has to be fixed. We dealt with that in the 30s and 40s.”

He said it’s time to learn from our history. “Here we are in the 21st century doing a very similar thing that we did 80 years ago. We’re repeating it, but this time we’re doing it through broadband.”

Baileyton resident Glenn Miller, whose family struggles with slow internet, also sees rural cooperatives as the answer to serving rural Alabama. He’s worked in telecommunications for more than 20 years, and discussed the issue with engineers he works with.

“We all came to one conclusion: what about the utility company?” he said. “Give them the power or authority. Because they already own the poles around here. They don’t have to rent the poles, they don’t have to dig up roads. All they have to do is hang the cable. Let them provide internet to the rural areas because there’s not one place I know of that doesn’t have power going to it.”

“The Cullman Electric Co-op Board is very aware of the need for high speed internet service across our entire community, but especially in some of the most rural areas where there are very few or no other options,” said Brian Lacy, manager of communications and external affairs. “We are taking a very hard look at that right now.”

The co-op is about to begin a project connecting its 17 substations in Cullman and Winston Counties with fiber, which Lacy said will allow the cooperative to better report power outages and provide other operational benefits to the electrical system. “There are just a lot of really good things that will help our primary operation, which is providing electricity to our members,” he said.

However, they are also aware of the secondary benefit having fiber in the community could provide. “It gives us the opportunity to potentially provide high speed internet to our members once that fiber’s in place,” he said. “Fiber in many ways today is like electricity was 80 years ago. We realize just like electricity became a necessity for everyone regardless of where you lived, that’s what high speed internet has become.”

Shedd thinks the legislative changes and additional state and federal funding – especially in light of the COVID-19 crisis that sent people home to work and attend school – is going to help develop more rural broadband,

“I think we’ve got a tremendous amount of broadband effort that’s coming forth before this year is over,” said Shedd.

“This pandemic has demonstrated that all areas need it,” he said. “I made the statement on the House floor that our grandchildren are not going to live in an area without access to technology, and I firmly believe that.”