URBANA – Champaign County officials broke ground on a $48.4 million fiber internet project Tuesday night that will serve thousands of rural homes, farms and businesses.
As of 2024, nearly 10% of households in Champaign County don’t have a broadband internet subscription, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The CONNECT Champaign County Fiber Internet project to connect 2,925 families to broadband has received $28.7 million from federal, state and local funding, according to Volo.net Internet and Tech, the local internet service provider constructing the fiber optic lines.
“People are expected to be able to jump on a Zoom call at basically any time. If your school’s closed, you’re expected to do real time video e-learning for three hours a day,” Volo.net CEO Peter Folk said. “That’s just not possible with most connections in rural areas of the county.”
That is something Somer Township farmer Scott Bidner knows all too well, he said.
“We’ve had probably at least five different internet providers on the farm. A couple of them were on my garage roof,” he said. “I put one up, had to take it down. I put the next one up. They kept changing this and doing that, and it just wasn’t very good.”
As opposed to other internet options, fiber internet will provide a long-term solution, Folk said.
“With fiber, we know how that will continue to perform for the next 30 years,” he said. “It is expected to keep ahead of demand curves for 30 to 50 years.”
Phase one of the project, which includes the construction of a “backbone” covering 110 miles of rural Champaign County, is estimated to be completed by the end of the year, according to Volo.net. The company will then focus on connecting rural communities in northwestern Champaign County to the backbone, Folk said.
“We’ve applied also for the BEAD [Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment] federal program,” he said, “and once that’s awarded, we will be hooking up people kind of all throughout Champaign County off the backbone.”
The project will be lifechanging for many farmers in the county, Champaign County Farm Bureau Manager Bailey Conrady said.
“I have often said that fiber broadband is rural electrification for the 21st century,” she said.
Champaign County Board Chair Jennifer Locke said it will also have a huge impact on economic development.
“It means businesses staying or moving to a county that makes it easier for them to reach the global market,” she said.
The idea for the project began in 2022 when the board received more than $40 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds, Locke said.
“The board made the excellent decision to dedicate a quarter of the ARPA funds to the goal of border-to-border high speed internet access around the county,” she said.
Through the Illinois Office of Broadband, the project received an additional $7.1 million, according to Volo.net.
That funding is part of a much bigger investment the state is making in rural internet, Office of Broadband Community Engagement Manager Lingling Liu said.
“The goal of the $386 million is to essentially bring highspeed, affordable internet to about 46,000 locations,” she said, “so 46,000 households and community anchor institutions will be served.”
But there’s still more to do, Liu said.
“There are about another 150,000 to 160,000 locations across the state that doesn’t have basic internet,” she said, “and that’s what we’re hoping to achieve with future funding.”
Folk said the Champaign County project also still needs an additional $50 to $60 million to connect the entire county to broadband. Volo.net plans to continue chipping away at it as more funding sources are located, he said.
“Our focus is here, and we’re not gonna get distracted by some other thing,” he said. “We are long term committed to solving this problem and permanently.”