Officials gathered April 3 in Mount Pleasant to outline an “accelerated rural construction plan for Texas,” which is connecting homes and small businesses in Titus (where Mount Pleasant is the county seat), Franklin, Red River and Hopkins counties.
High-speed Internet will expand into Camp, Morris and Wood counties. The counties fall into what the Texas Broadband Development Office has labeled the Upper East Region of the state.
State Sen. Bryan Hughes (R-1) and state Rep. Cole Hefner (R-5) made appearances Wednesday alongside company officials.
“Today we’re celebrating significant advancements to bring high-speed Internet to unserved East Texas homes and businesses in partnership with Spectrum and community stakeholders — this is a win for Texas’ most rural areas,” Hughes said.
Spectrum began a rural expansion plan more than two years ago, according to the news release, and is investing $400 million in state RDOF projects with $186 million from the Federal Communications Commission’s RDOF funding.
“We are in the midst of an unprecedented effort to build out our network to reach some of the most hard-to-serve locations in Texas,” said Mike Matson, Texas regional vice president of field operations for Charter Communications, which operates the Spectrum brand. “Because the need is so clear, and the urgency is there, Spectrum has doubled down to put more resources and focus on connecting rural areas across Texas — especially in the eastern portion of the state.”
Matson explained how timely execution of Spectrum’s accelerated rural deployment plan is dependent on several external factors, such as expedited permitting processes from local and state government, and cooperation from local utility companies so the company can attach fiber-optic cables to local utility poles.
“It takes a village to deliver Internet service to these rural areas,” Matson said. “With more distance between homes, construction teams must access several poles just to reach one homeowner.”
