Commitment to Connecting: Corning and Planters Broadband Cooperative Work to Close the Digital Divide in Rural Georgia

By Stephen Milner / Planters Communications 

At Planters Broadband Cooperative, we provide community-based broadband across Georgia, serving places and people that have been left behind when it comes to reliable, robust broadband.

As a cooperative serving a mostly rural area, we differ from many of our competitors. Our customers and footprint have unique needs, and we want to work with companies that understand them and our mission. That mission is not only to bring connectivity to our customers, but prosperity – recent research found that rural counties with high broadband adoption rates have 213% higher business growth, 44% higher GDP growth and 18% higher per capita income growth.

Over the years, we’ve developed a strong, longstanding relationship with Corning. I know and trust the team, and they’ve always been there when we’ve needed them to help us find the right solution. Corning has been a great supporter– and fiber has proved to be the right technology to bring critical connectivity to our area.

Bringing fiber to rural areas

There’s a misconception that “rural” only means miles of fields and woods, with great distances between homes. While that’s true for some areas, rural communities aren’t homogeneous – for example, there could be a hundred houses clustered in a tight-knit but remote area – meaning the challenge isn’t in connecting the homes but running the fiber out to the development. This is where Corning’s strengths shine – the breadth of their portfolio helps us connect rural customers no matter the circumstance.

On this recent project, in the northern areas of Georgia around Augusta, we worked with Corning to build our fiber-to-the-home networks in the ground, creating a strong, lasting network that is built to withstand weather and other disruptions.

The project is now almost complete, and as Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding becomes available to fund core footprints, we’re looking to expand to new counties to take on additional grant projects, as well as also expanding our territory south near Savannah. In both directions, these are primarily unserved and underserved communities in rural counties – and this is where we tend to rely on rural grants.

Time-saving solutions are key

When I approached Corning about our most recent project, we had just shifted to a new business model that required us to look for efficiencies. We were looking to grow connections but to do so while reducing truck rolls and smartly deploying our small but nimble team. Our crew was limited to tackling a maximum of 2 home installs a day and were facing a backlog of homes to connect. The Corning team immediately got to work, creating a game plan to help us address our two main priorities: flexibility and cost. In this case, I needed more than just products – I needed advice, guidance, and a collaborator.

When we met with Corning to review our challenges, they suggested the best approach would be to conduct a network review, examining internal work processes, design guidelines and costs. They spent a day and a half with various members of my team learning about our internal processes and resources management. By the end of their review, they presented us with 12 cost-saving recommendations that we have already started to implement in our operations.

Out of those improvements one of the most impactful recommendations was introducing connectivity solutions. Their ‘plug & play’ solutions drastically reduced our splicing work and helped mitigate the extra time and costs required to pass and connect homes - which is exactly what we needed to stay on track with our new deployment expansions.

Additionally, we successfully reorganized our resources to maximize efficiency. We can now delegate some of the complex, time-consuming tasks typically performed by splicers to our installation and repair (I&R) teams. For instance, tasks such as drop repairs and testing exercises, which were previously handled by splicers, can now be undertaken by our installers. This shift allows splicing teams to focus on primary tasks like completing the mainline work necessary to establish new homes for service, including splicing large feeder and distribution cables.

The more we expand our service area the more windshield time (the time spent traveling to and from remote sites) and truck rolls increase. As a small company, we do a lot of maintenance and repairs in-house, so the ability to save any extra time makes a big difference in how many homes we’re able to reach in any given day.

We’re more than satisfied with the improvements facilitated by the Corning team and their customized connectivity solutions. Together, we’re continuing to increase our efforts to optimize the ROI on our network expansion, and are currently trialing Corning’s FlexNAP™ system, with the goal of simplifying installation with a preconnectorized network access point that can integrate into fiber optic distribution cables. The simplified install will save us way over $25 per home passed as well as generating faster returns by speeding up the home connect process.

At Planters, we’re committed to serving the unserved and underserved. Our collaboration with Corning goes beyond just providing the essentials. The team at Corning really understands how important it is for us to accelerate our work to connect rural homes, and they’re willing to go the extra mile to help make it happen.