Project Update for Tuesday July 2, 2024
Since connecting our first customer in the early fall of 2022, there are now over 4,150 active Volt accounts with customers using the internet service daily!
In addition, construction on the buildout of the Volt Broadband network is approaching the 98% mark as of the first of July, 2024. The backbone fiber buildout continues to make good progress with construction at the 98% mark, with great take rates continuing in the 50% range. We should get another boost in our customer count now that the Crowville areas are open as of the end of June.
Fiber construction is in the late stages of the construction process and has been completed in four of the six feeders in the Fort Necessity and Wisner areas. These locales are on track to begin offering services next month. In the Como area, fiber construction continues and services should become available later this summer and early fall, if not sooner.
Like any other public utility, we may experience an occasional outage when our Direct Internet Access “drains” are impacted for one reason or another. When that happens, traffic automatically re-routes because we have three drains in place going to different major internet sites in Atlanta, Dallas, and Jackson. This “triple redundancy” offers us geographic diversity as well, so if any issues impact one or even two of these drains at the same time, customers will not be impacted. This has happened recently with network issues affecting one drain combined with a fiber cut affecting a second drain.
When we experience multiple customer outages, these are usually due to fiber cuts on our Volt distribution network and we must repair or replace the impacted fiber to bring those customers back up. A recent example of this impacted 17 customers and was caused by a shotgun blast that affected several of the 144 fibers in the cable. These repairs are costly and unfortunately, there have been several along the way. We urge those on the NELPCO lines to exercise caution and shoot responsibly.
With nearly all of the fiber buildout in place, we continue to sign new customers up every day. The service reviews continue to be very positive regarding the quality of our product and the ease of installation, and we are very pleased that we can bring this state-of-the-art service to all the NELPCO members. Despite our initial supply chain setbacks and some unforeseen bureaucratic delays, we remain on schedule to bring this service to all the NELPCO members within our initial time frame estimate.
And the best news is that those who use Volt’s state-of-the-art fiber service are extremely pleased with the product. We hear each day how it has been a game-changer for so many of our customers who use it for work, school, or play!
Please visit our website at http://www.voltbroadband.com for the latest construction information available, or to find out how you can sign up for this state-of-the-art service that is unique to our NELPCO membership. Our home office is located at 150 Christian Street in Rayville and is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Please drop by if you need more information or to sign up for the service.