Orange County Piloting Rural Broadband Project

The Orange County Board of Commissioners has approved a contract to develop broadband infrastructure for unserved or underserved residents in rural areas.

Open Broadband, LLC will be servicing the 36-month pilot project, which will serve almost 5,000 resident address points in the county.

Many residents of rural Orange County still rely on DSL for internet, which chair of the Orange County Board of Commissioners Mark Dorosin calls a huge impediment for businesses, economic development and education.

“It’s really impossible to understate what a critical element of our modern infrastructure broadband internet is,” says Dorosin. “If you live in one of the urbanized areas of Orange County, or really any of the urbanized areas of the state, its not an issue. You’re served by at least one and often have multiple internet service providers that can provide broadband access.”

The pilot program will cost $500,000 spread across four different service areas, and if successful, could be expanded even further throughout the county.

“The state legislature has put limits on what local governments can do on their own, really very tight restrictions on that,” Dorosin says. “So, we’ve been trying to find public-private partnerships but corporations don’t want to extend the infrastructure if there aren’t enough customers to subscribe.”

Dorosin says he has seen support across the community in response to the county’s commitment to this project.

“In the six years I’ve been a county commissioner, I think it’s one of the few issues where every single comment I got from anybody – email, phone call, people talking to me in the grocery store – was enthusiastically positive.”

The county approved the contract at their September 4 meeting. More information on the project is available here.

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