Gov. John Carney is calling on private internet service providers to help the First State to expand high speed internet into rural areas downstate.
Delaware hopes to use about $2 million in state funding to encourage companies to eliminate internet “deserts” in Western Kent and Sussex Counties by 2020.
Providers could piggyback off the network already built by the Delaware Electric Cooperative and a company now named Crown Castle.
The $3 million 250-mile fiber infrastructure connects area substations to the Cooperative’s headquarters in Greenwood.
DEC’s Josh Wharton showed Carney how the network allows them to manage the electricity grid from their computer screens.
“We saw a storm was coming, we’ve got crews out there working," he said. "They’ve called up said ‘Hey, we’ve got storms coming.’ If a lightning strike or a branch or anything would knock 600 customers out, we just made it so it wouldn’t do that right here.”
Broadband providers could purchase lines owned by Crown Castle to expand service into rural Delaware.
Carney said high speed broadband is critical to the state’s economy, education and agriculture.
“And over the next couple years, we hope eliminate all the deserts in Delaware, make us more competitive with every other state in the nation - even in the most rural areas of Kent and Sussex County,” he said.
Sussex County’s 2019 budget is also allocating $1.2 million for internet infrastructure and earlier this year county government announced a partnership with four private vendors to offer high-speed wireless internet to underserved areas in southern Sussex.
