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News Brief

Oct. 26, 2018 |  By: Ryan Elliott

New fiber optic cables are underway

United Electric Cooperative has received a $20 million grant to expand their United Fiber Service in Northwest Missouri and Southwest Iowa.
United Fiber is a service that provides high speed internet via fiber optic cable to rural portions of 11 counties in Northwest Missouri and Southwest Iowa. Communications Manager with United Electric, Amy Tobin says the grant will allow the cooperative to provide fiber optic internet service to all of the members in its service area.

"So our plan is to get the rest of our membership high speed internet - access to high speed internet.  Right now we have, I would say, 4000 members with high speed internet access.  We have about 7700 members total so we have about 3500 people to get fiber optic internet to."

Tobin also adds that having access to high speed internet is rare in rural communities and can be very beneficial.

"United Electric's membership -we have a very rural membership.  We have about 2.4 members per mile.  So any type of high speed internet out in those areas is pretty limited.  So for the people that work from home or go to school online or even just to stream the internet, they are not able to do that in the rural areas.  So with United Electric providing this service and getting fiber optic out to those areas, we can keep up with the urban areas versus being stuck in the stone ages, as they say."

Construction of the new fiber optic cables is underway and Tobin says it is expected to be done within four years.