U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt, Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter and Senate President Pro Tem Garlan Gudger joined other leaders to celebrate the completion of Tombigbee Electric Cooperative\u2019s fiber-to-home internet project in rural Northwest Alabama. The $145 million project, executed by Tombigbee Communications under its Freedom FIBER brand, brings high-speed internet access to over 100,000 residents across eight counties.<\/p>\n
Britton Lightsey, president and CEO of Tombigbee Electric Cooperative, highlighted the project’s alignment with the cooperative’s mission to serve rural communities. “If you look back to 1936 and the Rural Electrification Act, the whole premise of why co-ops were created was to get electricity outside the densely populated cities and into rural parts of America so as not to leave anyone behind,” Lightsey said. “We followed that same principle with our fiber project.”<\/p>\n
The celebration at Tombigbee Electric\u2019s headquarters in Hamilton drew more than 250 attendees, including state Reps. Bryan Brinyark, Tracy Estes, Jamie Keil, and Tim Wadsworth; state Sens. Gerald Allen and Jack Williams; and representatives from Gov. Kay Ivey and U.S. Sens. Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt\u2019s offices.<\/p>\n
Aderholt reflected on the project’s significance, stating, “That day, we set out on an ambitious mission: to make sure that families, businesses, and schools in rural communities across our state had the same access to high-speed internet as anyone in Birmingham or Huntsville or Mobile. And today, thanks to the leadership and vision of Tombigbee Electric Cooperative, that mission has been accomplished.”<\/p>\n
Since beginning the project in 2017, Tombigbee has installed over 4,200 miles of fiber and connected more than 27,000 customers. Lightsey emphasized the cooperative’s commitment to serving the entire area, stating, “If we were going to serve an area, we were going to serve the entire area and not pick and choose like other internet providers in the past had traditionally done.”<\/p>\n
Tombigbee continues to connect approximately three dozen new customers daily and maintains a growing list of service registrations through its website. Lightsey praised the local nature of their customer service, noting, “If you have any issue, you are calling Hamilton, Alabama. You\u2019re not calling another country or even another state.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt, Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter and Senate President Pro Tem Garlan Gudger joined other…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":314702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[52005,4956,158345,15372,712,3499,158344,158346,158,158343,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-314701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-community-service","9":"tag-fiber-internet","10":"tag-freedom-fiber","11":"tag-high-speed-internet","12":"tag-internet","13":"tag-internet-access","14":"tag-rural-alabama","15":"tag-rural-electrification-act","16":"tag-technology","17":"tag-tombigbee-electric","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115398000184363891","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}