The Tombigbee Electric Cooperative is celebrating the completion of its project to install 4,200 miles of fiber-to-home internet across eight Alabama counties in Northwest Alabama. The project, which began in 2017, will bring high-speed internet access to more than 100,000 rural residents in the region.
The new Freedom FIBER high-speed internet service, completed through the cooperative’s Tombigbee Communications subsidiary, will service Colbert, Fayette, Franklin, Lamar, Marion, Tuscaloosa, Walker and Winston counties.
U.S. Representative Robert Aderholt, Alabama House Speaker Nathaniel Ledbetter and Senate President Pro Tem Garlan Gudger joined Tombigbee Electric President and CEO Britton Lightsey in celebrating the project’s completion at the Tombigbee headquarters in Hamilton last Thursday. Over 250 people were in attendance, including several other state lawmakers and representatives from Governor Kay Ivey and U.S. Senators Tommy Tuberville and Katie Britt’s offices.
On Tuesday, APR spoke with Lightsey to better understand the impact the project will have on Northwest Alabama’s rural communities and to reflect on the important milestone for Tombigbee Electric.
“This past Thursday was just kind of a culmination of the last nine years and the celebration of over 4,200 miles of fiber being built and over 27,000 homes, businesses, and industries served with our service in all or parts of eight counties in northwest Alabama,” Lightsey explained. “You know, when this started eight years ago, our board never dreamed it would grow into what it has grown into. Originally, the kind of vision was to serve our members, serve Marion and Lamar County with world-class high-speed internet to the homes and to the industries in our area. And as popularity in our service grew, opportunities to expand outside that footprint presented themselves. And we’ve accomplished the mission to take it to every single person in the footprint where we were going to build.”
Lightsey explained that the inspiration behind the project came directly from the core mission of electric cooperatives: to bring essential connectivity to the communities they serve.
“If you go back to the root of why cooperatives even exist, in 1936, the Rural Electrification Act was passed by Congress, and that was to take electricity to the rural parts of America. And your densely populated cities back in the mid-30s typically had electricity–there was some infrastructure left to be built, but for the most part, your densely populated cities had power. Well, rural America was being left behind and so cooperatives came into play to serve the rural parts of America,” Lightsey explained.
“Our board took the same principle in 2017 and applied it to our fiber project and said, ‘if we are going to do this project, we are not going to leave anyone behind. We’re going to serve every rural citizen, every city, every community and not leave anyone behind,'” he added. “No matter where you live, no matter where you work, you’re going to have access to our service if we committed to build inside that footprint, and that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
Tombigbee’s fiber footprint has now grown even larger than the area where they provide electricity. For Lightsey, this represents the cooperative’s commitment to meeting the needs of Northwest Alabama’s rural communities.
“Our footprint has grown well outside of our electric footprint. We sit with about 9,500 customers, meters, on our electric co-op, and we have 27,000 broadband subscribers. So obviously we’ve gone well outside of our footprint, and it’s been truly good and the impact to the communities just can’t be measured,” Lightsey told APR.
“Who would have known when we started in 2017 that COVID was going to hit a few years later and all the children, all the kids, all the educational institutions in our footprint where we had service, every one of those had access to some of the best internet in the world,” he continued. “And so we strive to help our communities from healthcare, to educational institutions, to the economic development opportunities that present themselves. So, across the board, it runs the full gamut of trying to help our communities elevate themselves.”
Lightsey also emphasized the valuable impact which some of Alabama’s leading lawmakers and congressional delegates had on the project, providing Tombigbee with the necessary political support to bring fiber internet to the region.
“Without the support of Speaker Ledbetter, Senate Pro Tem Gudger, without the support of those individuals, without the support of Governor Ivey and Congressman Aderholt– Congressman Aderholt was critical to our success. He’s from Haleyville, Alabama, and we actually serve his home, his home place and his mother, with our internet, and so he saw the impacts firsthand as to what needed to be done in our community and in our region– Without their support, without their support from grants, without their support from legislation… we would not be where we are today, and their support has been critical to the expansion of broadband in our region and throughout the state of Alabama,” Lightsey said.
Aderholt himself echoed Lightsey’s comments at last Thursday’s event, celebrating the expansion of high-speed internet to Northwest Alabama’s rural communities.
“I had the privilege of standing right here in this same building back in 2018— alongside Governor Kay
Ivey and then-Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue — when we announced the creation of the USDA’s
ReConnect Program,” Aderholt said. “That day, we set out on an ambitious mission: to make sure that families, businesses and schools in rural communities across our state had the same access to high-speed internet as anyone in Birmingham or Huntsville or Mobile. And today, thanks to the leadership and vision of Tombigbee Electric Cooperative, that mission has been accomplished.”
Alabama House Speaker Ledbetter and Senate President Pro Tem Gudger also celebrated the project’s completion at the event, expressing excitement at the continued expansion of high-speed internet across Alabama’s rural communities.
“It’s amazing. Bringing broadband to rural Alabama has been one of the goals that we’ve had for Alabama for a number of years… We’re excited to continue the growth. Today, broadband is what electricity was in the early ’40s,” Ledbetter stated.
“It’s amazing to me when we work together how much we can accomplish,” said Gudger. “This is a monumental day for rural Alabama, for the state, to show that when we have a vision… that we can accomplish those goals.”
After working for nearly nine years to bring fiber internet to Northwest Alabama, Lightsey says that its the impact he’s seeing on the region’s rural communities that has made the project worthwhile.
“When you look at the impact that it’s had on our communities, that’s what makes it worth everything that we’ve done, everything that we’ve invested,” Lightsey stated. “We didn’t do this for the money, we did it to elevate our communities where we live, where we work, where we go to church, where we spend time with these people, to elevate Northwest Alabama and to put rural Northwest Alabama on the map.”
“That impact goes far beyond Tombigbee, it goes far beyond anything that we’ve ever done, it has elevated and changed the livelihood of the people of our region, and that’s what makes us proud. That’s what makes us get up every day and continue to work to improve our product, improve our customer service, and make sure that our customers get the type of service that they deserve.”
Although its fiber infrastructure is now complete, Lightsey says that Tombigbee Electric remains committed to investing in local Alabama communities however it can.
“Every dollar that is spent, we spend it inside of our communities. Every dollar that’s paid to us goes back into our product, goes back into our communities, goes back into our educational system, and there’s going to be ways that we look to give back in the future,” Lightsey told APR. “We support every school, every hospital, every fundraiser in our communities, and we’re going to continue to look for opportunities to give back even more in the future.”
“It’s not about money at the end of the day, it’s about helping our communities and giving back to those that have made us successful.”
For now, Tombigbee does not have any plans to extend its fiber network any further. Lightsey says that the cooperative is focused on maintaining its current footprint and finishing its installations for thousands of customers in the region.
