Linda Wines Millikin has been a lifelong resident of East Carroll Parish, one of the most rural parishes in Louisiana. Situated amidst the fecund farmland of the Mississippi Delta bordering two neighboring states, the reigning industry there is agriculture. According to the 2020 census, the parish was home to just over 7,400 people, but of those citizens, about one in four earned less than $10,000 annually. Around 47 percent of residents live in continual poverty year after year. The narrative is persistent: In 1994, the parish was even dubbed by TIME Magazine as the Poorest Place In America. But when Millikin looks around, she sees something very different.
“If you love wide-open spaces, then there is no place better to be,” she said. The beauty of nearby Lake Providence and the warmth of locals no matter what they have simply can’t be beat. However, one glaring fact about day-to-day life in this laid-back corner of the state is that internet providers can only offer slow speeds and inconsistent service. Between the rural makeup and the socioeconomic challenges of the region, larger telecom players haven’t built out modern broadband infrastructure. And incumbents haven’t upgraded what little does exist.
“I had AT&T DSL Internet and paid $40 a month for it,” Millikin said. “I didn’t even have megabytes. I had kilobytes. An AT&T representative told me to be happy with what I’ve got.”
That’s precisely why the news that Conexon Connect will build out at least 1,500 fiber connections in East Carroll Parish is so monumental. Conexon announced its plans earlier this week. The fiber build will be funded by a $4 million GUMBO grant from the state of Louisiana, $2.5 million in Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) support over the next decade and Conexon capital.
Bringing broadband to the bayou
“We don’t, as a nation, count some areas as insufficiently interesting to give people water and electricity. We only do [that] with broadband,” said Jonathan Chambers, partner at Conexon.
Founded about eight years ago, Conexon focuses exclusively on building out fiber networks hand-in-hand with rural electric cooperatives to deliver quality broadband to places, like East Carroll Parish, that have remained unserved or underserved. Its Conexon Connect arm also operates as an ISP.
Over the past seven years, Conexon has collaborated with hundreds of electric cooperatives with about 75 ongoing fiber construction projects. The team manages construction of over 1,000 miles per week and built over 50,000 miles in 2022, with more slated for 2023. “This makes us one of the largest constructors of fiber-optic networks in the country,” said Chambers.
One organization that helped link up East Carroll Parish and Conexon was Connect Humanity, a nonprofit impact fund that collaborates with underserved communities to elevate their broadband goals. Beyond the rural South, Connect Humanity frequently partners with communities in Appalachia, the Texas borderlands and Indigenous communities across the country.
“Along with the Mississippi Delta, these regions are part of what is designated by the U.S. government as ‘persistent poverty regions,’ and are communities we believe would greatly benefit from increased broadband access,” Connect Humanity’s Chief Program Officer Melissa Huerta explained.
Connect Humanity linked up with Delta Interfaith – a regional coalition of congregations and community organizations that Millikin is a part of – in 2021 to start the process of rendering local broadband visions into a reality. In addition to the aforementioned GUMBO and RDOF support for Conexon’s project in East Carroll, Connect Humanity committed a $50,000 grant to the parish to help promote broadband access and adoption. They’re currently in talks about additional ways to launch an investment and help the parish own their broadband network as a community.
Conexon Connect is planning on offering three tiers of service when construction is slated to wrap in Q4 of 2023: 100 Mbps for $49.95, 1 Gbps for $79.95 and 2 Gbps for $99.95.
Chambers estimates that over 90 percent of households will qualify for the Affordable Connectivity Plan’s discount of $30 per month and the FCC’s Lifeline discount of $9.25 per month. Between the two, residents can theoretically pay as little as $10.70 per month for their internet service. But Chambers has found that when greater speeds and quality are offered, rural households will pay for them.
“Where we build and operate, we find more people want 2 Gbps per second services more than other speeds,” Chambers said. “When we launched 2 Gbps in rural America eighteen months ago, there was skepticism that people needed it or wanted it.”
According to ACCESS BROADBAND maps from the U.S. Census Bureau, there isn’t a single person within the East Carroll Parish who works from home. But Millikin thinks within a few years this investment will help more residents turn around their own financial future.
Former residents could return home because they could make a living through remote work. Students will be able to complete their homework online. Young adults can tap into college classes. The sick or the elderly won’t have to drive hours each way to have a standard medical appointment. And, if all goes well with eventually transferring ownership of the fiber network, all of that infrastructure would be theirs alone for generations to come.