An internet service provider has committed to a $5.2 million infrastructure plan that will bring broadband offerings to about 800 homes and businesses in Greene County, one of the region's most rural counties.
It's the latest of several broadband-related improvements that have come to western Pennsylvania in recent months, nearly all of which have been made possible due to the more than $1.7 billion in federal funding that has been allocated for such plans across the commonwealth as part of President Joe Biden's "Internet for All" initiative from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that Biden signed into law in November 2021.
This $5.2 million plan from Kinetic, a business unit of Little Rock, Arkansas-based Windstream Holdings Inc. that offers internet service across 18 states, is expected to start in November and will become fully operational by the spring of 2024. The 105 miles of optical fiber it plans to lay will run through the townships of Aleppo, Freeport, Gilmore, Perry, Springhill and Wayne.
Greene County will offer $2.5 million in funding for the project via a grant it received from the Appalachian Regional Commission. Kinetic will supply $2.7 million to cover cost overruns of the project.
"I am very happy for this world-class internet service, which will benefit so many remote communities in Greene County," Greene County Commission Vice Chair Betsy McClure said in a statement. "This partnership will let the great people of this county stay connected with school, health care services and family, and is critical to the success of our economy and to future job creation."
Kinetic's plans to offer broadband service in Greene County came at the same time it announced that about 2,200 homes and businesses across four communities in Armstrong County can now access high-speed fiber internet services, with about 500 more customers set to get such service offerings by next spring.
The Armstrong and Greene County internet service upgrades are part of Kinetic's $2 billion multiyear plan to expand gigabit fiber service throughout its footprint in over a dozen states across the country.
