FiberLink, LLC

PROJECT PURPOSE

The purpose of the project is to provide 1Gb fiber-to-the-premise broadband service to 10,215 unserved locations in small rural communities with low population densities, and to 5,208 households of our most vulnerable Oklahomans. The program results in improved public health and safety services by connecting unserved locations in Mounds, Kiefer, Kellyville, and Bristow, resulting in 100% coverage for those areas. This is achieved by deploying 161 miles of new underground fiber in rural Creek County and a small area of southwest Tulsa County at an average project cost less than $1,257.17 per location. All unserved citizens in these neglected areas receive affordable state-of-the-art broadband service with minimum speeds of 1 Gbps for $89 per month. By providing no-cost installation, the program enables disadvantaged and low-income households to obtain fully insured subsidized service for less than $25 per month. This empowers every resident to fully participate in healthcare, educational instruction, and the diverse economic opportunities that are available only with high-speed internet connectivity. The $20M one-time investment in the project?s scalable network will also foster new, innovative economic expansion opportunities to an estimated 75,000 ? 150,000 Oklahomans over the next 20 years, marking this project as truly transformational for all Oklahomans.

EVIDENCE

None

POPULATION DESCRIPTION

All the small towns targeted by the project have been left out of recent federal funding for internet including, CAF2, RDOF and the ReConnect programs. The communities of Mounds, Kellyville, and Kiefer have legacy DSL service with top speeds around 8Mbps/0.5Mbps; and while parts of Bristow may have service from Cox, it remains underserved at steep costs with limited speeds. This lack of internet comes at a high cost, however. It is the reason a majority of residents in each of these towns were prevented from participating in digital healthcare, telemedicine, educational instruction, and/or distance learning during the COVID:19 pandemic. The leadership in each of these communities are all on record to witnessing the disproportionate impacts this lack of broadband inflicted on their most vulnerable populations. In short, no other group has been more impacted than these neglected individuals. That is precisely why the project targets deployment of fiber to 10,215 of these locations, and to another 5,208 locations also identified as disproportionally impacted and vulnerable by the 2022 QCT maps published by INCOG. The infrastructure it provides will eliminate these past barriers resulting in improved health, safety, and education, critical to the future of these communities.

PERFORMANCE MEASURING

This presumptively eligible project will collect data to generate comprehensive annual reports for five years to measure success of the program. Information will be collected from network monitoring and established survey practices. Available information from federal and state agencies and other facilities providing similar services to the project will also be collected and considered. The annual reports will include sampling information sufficient to identify (i) total/percentage of locations electing project service, (ii) total/percentage of disproportionately impacted and vulnerable individuals electing project service, and (iii) total/percentage of subscribers directly participating in work, education, and health monitoring services through the project service.

ONGOING INVESTMENT AMOUNT

$

ONGOING INVESTMENT DESCRIPTION

None

ONGOING INVESTMENT REQUIRED

Able to continue operation without additional funding from the State of Oklahoma