Franklin Electric looking to bring broadband to county

By Staff
Slade Glmer
High-speed internet, long thought to be almost impossible for residents of rural areas throughout the state, may be on its way to rural areas of Franklin County.
The Franklin Electric Cooperative is looking for grant funding to help bring broadband over power lines (BPL) to several underserved and non-served areas of Franklin County.
According to Frank Hoehn, technical project manager for Franklin County, the idea came after several years of attempting to use other methods.
However, after a trip to Cullman, where the BPL prototype has been implemented to serve the customers of rural Cullman County, Hoehn thought it was a feasible idea to bring to Franklin County.
"It allows a company to bring broadband connectivity to the substations, and allow the connection to reach anyone with a power meter," Hoehn said.
Franklin County Cooperative is working with International Broadband Electric Communications (IBEC), which is based in Huntsville to help build the infrastructure to make this happen.
"We were fortunate to find a local company to help with this," Hoehn said.
Hoehn added that while this project is with Franklin Electric Cooperative, there is hope to add power providers to this.
"We are looking into other partnerships with the other power providers in the county," Hoehn said.
While there is optimism, the project is only in the planning stage at the current moment.
"We are going after money to build the infrastructure to deploy broadband, which through Franklin Electric Cooperative, serve the underserved and non-served in Franklin County," Hoehn said.