From vision to connection: five years of Coastal Fiber

This sum­mer marked a mile­stone for Coastal Fiber—five years of plan­ning, build­ing and splic­ing to bring fast, reli­able inter­net ser­vice to Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive mem­bers.

Cre­at­ed in 2021 as an affil­i­ate of Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive, Coastal Fiber’s mis­sion from the begin­ning was to bring high-speed fiber inter­net to under­served areas where ser­vice was lim­it­ed or not acces­si­ble at all. Today, that vision has become a real­i­ty for thou­sands of mem­bers, and Coastal Fiber is work­ing to reach more.

One of the cooperative’s biggest achieve­ments to date is mak­ing Coastal Fiber avail­able to all Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive mem­bers in Lib­er­ty Coun­ty.

Since con­struc­tion began, Coastal Fiber has steadi­ly grown its foot­print, con­nect­ing mem­bers in Mid­way, Flem­ing, Colonels Island, Sun­bury, Rice­boro, Allen­hurst, Walthourville, Hinesville and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

Ser­vice is also now avail­able in por­tions of south Bryan Coun­ty, includ­ing the Heart­wood and Del Webb com­mu­ni­ties. Engi­neer­ing and con­struc­tion con­tin­ue to expand the net­work into more areas of Rich­mond Hill.

Now, just after its fifth anniver­sary, Coastal Fiber is expand­ing its ser­vice offer­ings with the intro­duc­tion of a new 5G inter­net package—its fastest to date.

The 5G plan will fea­ture 5,000 Mbps upload and down­load, along with perks of Coastal Fiber’s exist­ing res­i­den­tial pack­ages, such as unlim­it­ed data, 24/7 tech sup­port and Coastal Fiber’s mobile app.

The new 5G pack­age is designed for users who need extra band­width for online process­es, mul­ti­ple con­nect­ed devices, simul­ta­ne­ous HD/4D stream­ing, work­ing from home or online gam­ing.

For more infor­ma­tion or to upgrade to 5G, vis­it CoastalFiber.com.

Fiber improves elec­tric reli­a­bil­i­ty

While fast, reli­able inter­net remains the pri­ma­ry ben­e­fit for Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive mem­bers, Coastal Fiber is also help­ing improve the elec­tric ser­vice behind the scenes.

Of course, restor­ing out­ages quick­ly is a pri­or­i­ty for an elec­tric coop­er­a­tive, and the fiber net­work is mak­ing that process even more effi­cient. By strength­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the cooperative’s out­age man­age­ment sys­tem, Coastal Fiber pro­vides faster, more reli­able data that helps crews iden­ti­fy and respond to out­ages more quick­ly.

“Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive prides itself on out­age restora­tion,” says CJ Howard, engi­neer­ing man­ag­er. “When fiber is con­nect­ed to the meter, we will know imme­di­ate­ly when that meter quits com­mu­ni­cat­ing and can have faster response times to out­ages.”

With fiber con­nect­ed direct­ly to the meter, the coop­er­a­tive can also bet­ter detect momen­tary pow­er inter­rup­tions, or “blinks,” across the elec­tric sys­tem, pro­vid­ing valu­able infor­ma­tion that helps improve sys­tem reliability—even down to blinks occur­ring at a sin­gle res­i­dence.

These tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments are anoth­er exam­ple of how invest­ments in broad­band infra­struc­ture ben­e­fit the entire coop­er­a­tive, extend­ing beyond inter­net ser­vice to enhance the elec­tric sys­tem itself.

Local makes a dif­fer­ence

As a local­ly owned coop­er­a­tive affil­i­ate, Coastal Fiber deliv­ers some­thing nation­al providers can’t match—a home­town com­mit­ment to ser­vice and care for the com­mu­ni­ty we call home.

When Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive mem­bers call Coastal Fiber, a real, live per­son greets them on the oth­er end of the line. If some­thing needs to be checked out, a tech­ni­cian from down the street comes to help, not some­one dis­patched from a big city hours away.

Coastal Fiber’s local pres­ence means faster response times, famil­iar faces and a team of peo­ple who are invest­ed in Bryan, Lib­er­ty, Long and McIn­tosh coun­ties because we live here, too.

While Coastal Fiber oper­ates as a sep­a­rate com­pa­ny, its roots in coop­er­a­tive prin­ci­ples and the coop­er­a­tive busi­ness mod­el con­tin­ue to shape its day-to-day oper­a­tions.

Five years after its found­ing, Coastal Fiber con­tin­ues to ful­fill its orig­i­nal mis­sion of con­nect­ing under­served com­mu­ni­ties while sup­port­ing the cooperative’s broad­er com­mit­ment to improv­ing qual­i­ty of life for its mem­bers.

As con­struc­tion pro­gress­es in Bryan Coun­ty, even more Coastal Elec­tric Coop­er­a­tive mem­bers will soon have access to the speed, reli­a­bil­i­ty and local ser­vice that define Coastal Fiber.

To learn more about Coastal Fiber or check ser­vice avail­abil­i­ty, vis­it CoastalFiber.com or call (833) 434‑3311.