CLAY TOWNSHIP—Yoder Auto Body & Collision sits among rolling hills and farm fields. Until recently, the company lacked reliable, high-speed internet.
On Friday, local and state officials joined owner James Yoder in welcoming Spectrum’s gigabit broadband services to Deal Road and other unserved and underserved areas of Knox County.
Spectrum’s multi-year, $9 billion rural construction initiative will connect around 1.75 million new homes and small businesses nationwide.
The company invested around $16.4 million in high-speed internet in Knox County, bringing fiber optic cable to about 3,000 locations. The addresses are in Butler, Clay, Clinton, College, Harrison, Jackson, Liberty, Miller, Morgan, Morris, and Pleasant townships.
Spectrum, whose parent company is Charter Communications, activated 1,726 of the 3,000 locations.
“Charter is really committed to supporting America’s rural communities and connecting them with life-changing possibilities that broadband creates,” said Brian Young, director of government affairs for Charter Communications.
According to Young, Charter’s leadership team made a massive commitment to investing in rural areas just before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We really have been able to see during the pandemic and then after how that has really paid dividends,” he said.
The need for high-speed internet
Yoder grew up doing construction, but when he was 15, he saw a 1967 Volkswagen Beetle.
“I saved my money and bought it,” he said. “I restored it by the time I was 18 and got bit by the bug.”
He quit construction at age 20 and went into automobiles, gradually moving into collision repair.
Yoder said having Google and YouTube in 1990 would have saved him a lot.
“Nowadays, if you have a little bit of know-how, you can do anything with the information. So, I’m very thankful for having internet,” he said.
“We did have internet here, but it was not the greatest,” he continued. “We got by, but the service was horrible. If it went down, it was a week, 10 days, maybe by the time they came out to fix it.”
Yoder said if the internet goes down, he cannot order supplies or do estimates.
“That’s one thing I definitely appreciate about Spectrum. If I have a problem, they’re usually out here the very next day taking care of it.”
Knox County Commissioner Teresa Bemiller said the commissioners know how important broadband access is to residents, especially in underserved or unserved.
“The COVID pandemic, as Brian said, highlighted this problem as people tried to work from home and students needed virtual access to their schools,” she said.
“It also brought to the forefront the important need to address the lack of connectivity. With the role of technology in today’s world, access to dependable high-speed internet is a necessity, not a luxury.”
Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RODF)
The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund is a federal program that provides funding for census blocks across the county lacking broadband access.
Charter bid on census blocks contiguous to its existing network so it could expand into areas with already-existing staffing.
“Charter was awarded $3,289,164 from the RDOF auction. That covers about 20% of the build. The remainder was paid for by private capital from Charter,” Young said.
Charter started RDOF construction in 2022. The Knox County RDOF project costs around $16.4 million.
The commissioners appreciate the state acknowledged rural counties’ needs by providing funding through the RDOF.
“And of course, the significant investment Spectrum Charter is making in fiber expansion projects in counties such as Knox,” Bemiller said. “We’re very excited to see so many locations have been activated. We certainly look forward to more of that in the future.”
Leveling the field
Ohio Sen. Andrew Brenner grew up in a rural area and recalls having no internet access.
“Even going from a 28K modem when I was a kid to what was supposed to be high-speed at three or four meg download and upload — that just does not cut it,” he said.
Noting that southern Knox County has long needed broadband, Brenner said residents can now livestream everything, download faster, and watch videos much more efficiently.
He also noted most farmers use GPS and need broadband to manage their farms better.
“Being able to have at least a 400 meg download up to a gig or more, that’s outstanding,” Brenner said. “And that is something that is being brought now to the rural areas.
“It is highly important. I think this is a great day for this part of the state and all of Ohio.”
Ohio State Rep. Beth Lear noted that people in the cities and suburbs have long been blessed with the ability to connect quickly and switch between providers.
“Those haven’t been options for our constituents in rural Ohio,” she said. “I’m very excited that folks in these areas will have the phone service they need.
Lear said she was excited people can access streaming and other services, as well as things many take for granted. She cited online banking as an example.
“This is a great opportunity for rural areas to have the same privileges that folks in the cities and the suburbs have,” she said.
“I’m so grateful to all of you for taking a chance on us and coming out here and doing this work. It’s needed, and we’re grateful.”
High-speed internet: ‘The great social equalizer’
Rick Carfagna, senior vice president for Government Affairs at the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber has long advocated for broadband expansion to enhance development and ensure Ohio’s economic competitiveness.
“Broadband is the great social equalizer of our time,” he said.
“It brings long-lost employment, education, healthcare, and commerce opportunities presently denied to so many throughout Knox County.”
Opportunities include working from home, virtual learning, and telehealth. Other advantages include disabled Ohioans communicating with caregivers so they can live independently. Broadband also enables elderly relatives to age in place rather than go to assisted living.
“And I think of the transformative economic impact that this type of infrastructure brings. It allows the younger generation to put down roots in our smaller towns, our rural areas,” Carfagna said.
“They can telecommute; they can set up home-based businesses. And those are the very kinds of seeds of prosperity that we can plant with this type of infrastructure.”
Carfagna said that in addition to federal dollars through RODF, the Ohio Residential Broadband Expansion Grant Program brings connectivity to many more Knox County addresses.
About Spectrum
Spectrum operates in 41 states, with Ohio one of its largest service areas. The company has about 32 million customers nationwide and just over 5 million homes and small businesses in 86 Ohio counties.
“Last year we activated just over 80,000 homes and businesses here in Ohio on our new fiber network that we have here in Knox County,” Young said.
“We’re really proud that while we offer a multitude of services — legacy video services, home phone service, our mobile service — our internet is really what most people identify whenever we’re talking about launching broadband in a new area.”
Young said the service at Yoder’s is the same product and customer service the company offers in Columbus, Los Angeles, or Dallas.
The company has one uniform price, gigabit speeds, no data caps, modem fees, or contracts. The network reliability is 99%, and the company runs the fiber optic to the home or business.
Spectrum offers a low-income broadband tier, Spectrum Internet Assist, for qualified customers.
“The other thing we’re really proud of is our local workforce,” Young said, adding that Spectrum has a technical center on the southwest side in Mount Vernon.
“We have about 40 people who work out of that office and they pretty much are all the trucks that you see. We’re really proud that they keep our network in tip top shape so that we can achieve 100% connectivity.”
