MADISON — A $303,224 state grant announced Tuesday will help fully wire the village of Orfordville for high-speed internet.
Sonic Spectrum of Durand, Illinois, has “a good share” of the village wired now, said Village Board President Gary Phillips, and under the terms of the Broadband Expansion Grant program, it should complete the process within two years.
Internet companies Mediacom and Frontier Communications were either uninterested or reluctant to upgrade the services they were providing to the village, at the time Sonic Spectrum was wiring Footville with broadband internet.
“I called him (Sonic owner A.J. Becker) about getting fiber in Orfordville, and then got to talking about the grant and formed a partnership with them,” Phillips said.
The state’s Broadband Expansion Program requires matching funds contributed by the municipality or its partner. Sonic Spectrum will supply the matching $303,224 and the village will waive the cost of the required permits, which, the village has none, Phillips joked.
Sonic will bring the fiber cable north from Beloit along SH 213 corridor and design the network to serve 417 homes along the highway between Orfordville and Creedy Road, according to the grant application.
The fiber optic network will serve all 530 residences and 30 businesses in Orfordville, according to the grant application.
The application had the support of the Orfordville Police Department, which wrote that it would benefit from high-speed internet when trying to identify the type of drug a person may have taken. Also, it would provide better access to training materials and improved connections with the Rock County Sheriff’s Department.
The Parkview School District and other local first responders expressed support for the grant.
Installing the fiber cable would likely begin at the water tower on the south side of the village, bore under the railroad tracks and work toward the industrial park, said Phillips.
Sonic takes a “street by street” approach to installing fiber optic cable and works directly with the homeowner, which increases efficiency and lowers overhead, according to the application.
A call to Becker about the grant was not returned by deadline.
Sonic has been providing broadband in the state-line area for 10 years.
Phillips is looking forward to high-speed internet which he envisions will be a big help to his business and other businesses in the area.
“It will be tremendous to have it. We’ll able to process things a lot quicker, it will speed up placing orders. The faster speeds will be better,” he said.
The Public Service Commission, which administers the grant process defines high-speed internet as capability of downloading data at 100 million bits per second and uploading data at 25 mbps.
Sonic charges subscribers $59.95 monthly for 25Mbps service, according to its website.
Orfordville’s grant was one of 143 the PSC received requesting a total of $50.87 million.
The PSC awarded 72 grants totaling $23.59 million, surpassing the combined $20.2 million it awarded in the six prior years of the program.
The Legislature established the Broadband Expansion Grant Program in 2013 to improve the quality and availability of high bandwidth communications services in underserved areas of the state.