Christian Peterson
Reporter@riverbendnews.org
On Tuesday, July 26, the Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative (SVEC) invited members, elected officials and business partners to a special announcement. Suwannee County Commissioners, Hamilton County Commissioners, Live Oak City Council members, SVEC board members and many others all filed in to the SVEC building at 9 a.m. Michael McWaters, Vice President and CEO of SVEC, opened the briefing with a few words about the hard work that has gone into the event. McWaters continued by announcing SVEC’s newest plan, Rapid Fiber Internet.
The announcement came after tremendous amounts of work and planning, but SVEC was finally ready to announce their plans for a new, 100 percent fiber-optic network. This will allow SVEC to expand their electric smart-grid and its self-healing capabilities. On top of this, it will bring fiber to SVEC customer homes, increasing Wi-Fi speed by a tremendous amount. The new service will be provided to SVEC members through its subsidiary company, Rapid Fiber Internet. All of this comes with a partnership with construction management group, Conexon.
This new project is expected to take up to four years and cost close to $93 million. By its end, it will span over 4,100 miles, delivering high speed internet to homes and businesses in Hamilton, Lafayette, Suwannee and northern Columbia Counties. The true goal is to bring high speed internet to every SVEC member. Construction is slated to begin in the second quarter of 2023 and the first costumers should begin receiving the new internet in the third quarter of 2023.
“In 1937, residents and community leaders banded together to create SVEC to bring reliable and affordable electricity to the people of Suwannee Valley when existing utilities would not. Today, like many other parts of rural America, our area finds itself on the wrong side of a digital divide, being underserved or unserved by internet providers. In the same spirit as before, the cooperative once again endeavors to provide for a vital unmet need in our community,” McWaters said. The new high-speed internet will offer identical download and upload speeds at two gigabits per second. It will support unlimited data and high-definition media for streaming TV. It will even open up better opportunities for remote learning, telemedicine, work-from-home and, ultimately, economic development and growth. McWater later continued, saying, “We are excited to work closely with a trusted partner like Conexon to bring high-speed internet services to our part of rural Florida. Conexon brings expertise and years of experience in fiber to the home systems for cooperatives across the country and we are confident that, together, we will achieve great results for our community, ushering in a new era of innovation and opportunity.”
Randy Klindt, a Conexon founding partner, also spoke, saying, “At Conexon, we believe that access to high-speed internet is an educational and economic equalizer for rural communities. We’re proud to partner with organizations like SVEC that are committed to improving the lives and communities of those they serve through world-class broadband services. It represents a tremendous commitment from the cooperative that will benefit consumers for generations to come.”
