Electric Cooperative Gigabit Gains Traction

Electric cooperative gigabit is becoming more commonplace, as news from Aug 28 about four electric cooperative gigabit deployments illustrates. The four cooperatives include two Tennessee companies (Sequachee Valley Electric Cooperative and Meriwether Lewis Electric Cooperative), along with two Alabama cooperatives (North Alabama Electric Cooperative and Tombigbee Electric Cooperative.) All four companies said they would work with engineering service provider FiberRise and equipment provider Adtran on their gigabit deployments. The state of Tennessee has seen a rise in electric cooperative fiber deployments in the last year or so, since legislators voted to allow electric cooperatives to offer retail broadband services. In addition to Sequachee Valley Electric Cooperative and Meriwether Lewis Electric Cooperative, another Tennessee company that made the news this week was Middle Tennessee Electric Membership Corporation, which said it would work with United Communications, a neighboring rural telecom provider, on a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) project.