More of Brown County will receive high-speed fiber internet next year through power company SCI REMC.
Phase 2 of the company’s fiber-to-the-home project will serve 4,556 homes in Brown and Morgan counties. In Brown County, it’ll cover the eastern part of Jackson Township and much of Hamblen Township, excluding the area around the Cordry-Sweetwater lakes community.
Phase 1 of the project, announced in April, is under construction now in Brown, Morgan and Monroe counties. It will reach about 1,700 customers in Brown County, including the Lake Lemon area; western Jackson Township; Lanam Ridge and Oak Grove roads; Yellowwood Lake Road north of the lake; and areas west and southwest of Nashville around State Road 46 West.
Phase 1 customers are expected to have internet starting in early 2019, SCI REMC reported.
The most concentrated sign-up areas in Phase 2 will get service as soon as July 2019, with the last areas in that phase going live by early 2020, said James Tanneberger, president and CEO. He encouraged people in Phase 2 to encourage their neighbors to sign up. “Whichever areas in Phase 2 have the highest percentage of pre-registered members will be the areas that get internet access first,” he said in a press release.
A map showing the current and future expansion zones and status of each one is posted at https://join.sciremc.com/#Zones.
SCI REMC members in these areas will be able to get high-speed internet at speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second, the company reported. Residential plans start at $55 per month.
A majority of Brown County homes and businesses receive power from either SCI REMC or Jackson County REMC, both of which are in the process of building fiber-optic broadband networks for their customers.
Jackson County REMC serves about 1,200 power customers in Brown County, with the majority living in Van Buren Township and three in Washington Township. Extending fiber internet service to Brown County will cost about $3.5 million, CEO Mark McKinney said in April. The Brown County phase was to begin late this summer and would take about a year to complete.
McKinney said the plan is to extend internet service to every Jackson County REMC member who wants it, but they have to request it by visiting jacksonconnect.net.
SCI REMC’s eventual goal is to be able to offer broadband to all its customers, just like electricity.
“Access to a high-speed internet connection has gone from a luxury to a necessity, and most of our electric members are at risk of being left behind,” Tanneberger said. “We want to make sure this does not happen.”
SCI REMC plans to have broadband available to all 24,418 of its power customers by 2021. The entire project is expected to cost SCI REMC about $84 million.
At an April press conference, Tanneberger estimated the investment in Brown County at about $17 million just from this initiative. He said the interest Brown County has shown — including sign-ups from customers and the support which has come from local officials — was a factor in choosing Brown County for the earlier phases of expansion.
The parts of Brown County served by a different power company, Duke Energy, are generally along state highways in the Nashville, Gnaw Bone, Camp Roberts, Fruitdale and Helmsburg areas. However, some of those homes and businesses also have access to fiber internet because of the efforts of a local company, Mainstream Fiber, which began building a broadband “backbone” to connect Brown County school campuses in 2011.
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If they have not done so already, SCI REMC power members in Phase 1 and 2 of the broadband expansion need to preregister for internet service at https://join.sciremc.com to get free installation.
As the backbone and main-line distribution fiber facilities are being completed, SCI will begin contacting members to arrange to bring fiber to each member’s home. This last major construction step is called a “drop.” The drop construction will bring fiber cable across the property to a termination point on the outside of each member’s home.
Once the drop is terminated and tested, the final step is the in-home installation appointment, at which SCI Fiber will connect the fiber cable inside the home, set up the in-home equipment, and perform the necessary steps to begin providing services.
ON THE WEB
- SCI REMC: sciremc.com/scifiber
- Jackson County REMC: jacksonconnect.net
- Mainstream Fiber: msfiber.net/areas-served/brown
