The $50 million project is anticipated to be completed within 2 years, with the first customers expected to be connected in 3Q 2021.Īlthough the Tri-County EMC membership is 90% residential, the service territory is geographically and socioeconomically diverse, spanning lake resort areas, a college town, retirement communities, national forest lands, and denser urban areas.Īs the team began exploring, Greg Mullis, Chief Operating Officer for the co-op’s fiber subsidiary Tri-CoGo and VP of Corporate Services for Tri-County EMC, remembers learning that some co-op members were paying upward of $250 per month for internet service, largely due to data overages. Now the cooperative is building a 1,600-mile fiber-to-the-home network that will offer access to 100% of its service territory upon completion. Tri-County EMC serves 18,000 members with 22,100 electric meters in the central Georgia counties of Baldwin, Bibb, Jasper, Jones, Morgan, Putnam, Twiggs and Wilkinson. We really found out what the need was in our area.” Once you start asking the question, then you uncork the bottle.

“Where you live shouldn’t dictate whether you have those same opportunities. “Life in 2020, or 2021, or 2022, depends on having internet access to the world – whether it’s for education, for health, for commerce or anything else,” Tri-County EMC CEO Ray Grinberg said. But surveying the membership told a different story: The initial response revealed 98% of members were interested either in signing up automatically or considering a switch because current service wasn’t doing enough, or priced too high. When Tri-County EMC in rural central Georgia began investigating broadband, the perception among co-op leadership was that most members already had adequate service.

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