Coastal Fiber will deliver broadband to 16,000 members in three counties

On July 20, 2021, Gov­er­nor Bri­an Kemp, Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive, and Darien Com­mu­ni­ca­tions made a joint announce­ment of the cre­ation of Coastal Fiber, an affil­i­ate of Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive.

The new part­ner­ship between Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive and Darien Com­mu­ni­ca­tions will impact 16,000 Coastal Elec­tric cus­tomers in 3 coun­ties — Bryan, Lib­er­ty, and Long. Coastal Elec­tric cus­tomers in McIn­tosh Coun­ty will con­tin­ue to receive their broad­band ser­vice direct­ly from Darien Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

Coastal Elec­tric and Darien Com­mu­ni­ca­tions will invest $39.5 mil­lion over the life of the project.

The part­ners are present­ly still in the design phase. Actu­al con­struc­tion on the first phase of the project will begin this fall. The aim is to con­nect the first cus­tomers by Jan­u­ary 2022 — increas­ing busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties, enrich­ing edu­ca­tion, improv­ing access to health­care, and much more.

Phase one of the project will reach the most unserved and under­served areas of east Lib­er­ty Coun­ty includ­ing Sun­bury and Colonels Island. Also includ­ed is a por­tion of Coastal Elec­tric’s ser­vice ter­ri­to­ry in Long Coun­ty. A map will be avail­able soon, but there are three gen­er­al areas to be served in the ini­tial project: every­thing down Island’s Hwy from I‑95 to Colonels Island, the Hwy 119 cor­ri­dor from Rice­boro out to Long Reach sub­sta­tion, and the Hwy 17 South cor­ri­dor from Rice­boro to I‑95. The sec­ond phase will serve cus­tomers in Bryan Coun­ty, many of whom already have a choice of two or three broad­band providers.

Even­tu­al­ly, Coastal Elec­tric will bring fiber to every mem­ber home that has an elec­tric meter as well as oth­er homes with­in our geo­graph­ic ter­ri­to­ry that receive elec­tric­i­ty from oth­er elec­tric com­pa­nies.

Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive was found­ed more than 80 years ago as a not-for-prof­it, mem­ber-owned elec­tric coop­er­a­tive to elec­tri­fy the unserved areas of rur­al coastal Geor­gia. Our core mis­sion then was to pro­vide safe, reli­able, and afford­able elec­tric­i­ty.

Today, in addi­tion to pro­vid­ing elec­tric­i­ty, Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive has been intent­ly focused on help­ing find solu­tions to anoth­er chal­lenge for some of our mem­bers — expand­ing reli­able, high-speed Inter­net access.

The lack of broad­band in the most rur­al com­mu­ni­ties with­in our ser­vice ter­ri­to­ry has been crit­i­cal for years — exac­er­bat­ed by COVID-19 and the clo­sure of class­rooms and busi­ness­es.

Oper­a­tional­ly, Coastal Fiber will build the fiber lines either over­head or under­ground in exist­ing rights of way and pro­vide the ser­vice drop to the out­side of the home. Darien Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, oper­at­ing under the Coastal Fiber brand, will pro­vide the in-the-home router, cus­tomer ser­vice, and billing.

Coastal Fiber chose Darien Com­mu­ni­ca­tions as our part­ner because they are a local, fam­i­ly-owned busi­ness with a stel­lar record of cus­tomer ser­vice. They have built a 1‑gigabit fiber net­work through­out most of the rur­al areas of McIn­tosh Coun­ty. (They still have some pock­ets of 200 MB broad­band over coax­i­al cable.)

Even if a cus­tomer does not choose to be served by Coastal Fiber, the fiber optic cable con­nec­tion to their home will facil­i­tate con­nec­tiv­i­ty to the next gen­er­a­tion of elec­tric meters which will pro­vide increased reli­a­bil­i­ty and an enhanced array of ser­vices not cur­rent­ly avail­able; how­ev­er, con­struc­tion will be pri­or­i­tized to those loca­tions that are request­ing broad­band ser­vice.

Elec­tric coop­er­a­tives in Geor­gia have com­mit­ted to invest more than $580 mil­lion in broad­band to ensure their mem­bers have high-speed Inter­net ser­vice.

In total, these projects are set to impact more than 200,000 Geor­gians in 62 coun­ties in the state.