Lake Region Electric Cooperative has always been member-focused. In the 1930s, rural America had been left in the dark as electricity made its way across the country. Electricity had become a modern necessity, and cities enjoyed the opportunities it brought. But rural folks had to do without until the men and women of Lake Region stepped up and formed the electric cooperative.

In the 21st century, new technology emerged as an essential service for homes and businesses: broadband internet. This technology transforms lives and brings economic development to the areas that adopt it. Once again, rural members have been left behind. Lake Region surveyed their members back in the early stages of our fiber-to-the-home build-out and overwhelmingly saw a need for reliable, affordable, and fast internet with great customer service.

Lake Region was already providing satellite internet to bridge the gap for many rural folks experiencing dial-up service. Lake Region knew its members needed their co-op to step up to the plate and offer a superior service where no one else would.

The members came to Lake Region asking for help from various internet service providers that offered abysmal speeds, poor customer service, and no existing investment in infrastructure for reliability and future growth. Lake Region knew they could fill this void and become the local trusted internet provider their rural communities needed.

In 2012-2013 Lake Region started a fiber pilot zone, which included 200 miles of fiber optic lines. The pilot zone was completed and revealed it would be beneficial to the cooperative and their members.

After studying the feasibility of the pilot zone, Lake Region formed a fiber telecom subsidiary and started a complete three-phase build-out of the entire electric service area. A large project was underway being constructed from the ground up.

The goal is to provide access to the best broadband service around to each and every community within LREC’s service territory across Cherokee, Wagoner, Muskogee, Rogers, and Mayes Counties, even those in the most remote areas. The board of directors and management were firmly committed to providing internet, TV, and home phone to all Lake Region Electric members who choose to subscribe.

“Currently, we are near 9,000 subscribers, and halfway through our final Phase III build-out plan of our entire electric grid just over 3,000 miles of line. We hope to have service available to all our electric members in late 2022 or early 2023,” said Glen Clark, Director of Marketing and Member Services.

Lake Region Technology & Communications is a locally-owned and operated subsidiary of Lake Region Electric Cooperative located in Hulbert, Okla., and is a member of the Cooperative Broadband Coalition.

Bringing fiber to rural Oklahoma homes and businesses with nearly 15,000 miles of line and counting.

This is what we call the COOPERATIVE DIFFERENCE.

Central Rural Electric Cooperative serves more than 23,000 meters across seven counties in north-central Oklahoma. For more than 10 years, the cooperative has been working to increase system reliability and support connectivity for its rural membership, however, efforts to do so have fallen short of reaching everyone.

“The pandemic really highlighted the disparity of access to high-speed internet,” said Hunter Robinson, CEO of Central. “There were parts of our service area with limited or no access.”

The need to prepare the grid for the future and support rural connectivity became even more evident when Central learned that one school district in its service area estimated that 40% of its students lacked access to high-speed internet. This data was confirmed in 2020 when the State Board of Education shared that approximately 25% of Oklahoma public-school children lack access to home internet.

In March 2020 Central sent a survey seeking feedback from a random selection of its members on their interest in fiber internet. The results were overwhelmingly positive: 97% supported moving forward with fiber.

Other key findings included:

• 83% of the members surveyed currently had internet service.
• Of those who did not have internet service, reasons for not subscribing were expense (37%), followed by availability (29%) and reliability (27%); 8% indicated they do not want/need internet service.
• The most common internet connections were land-based wireless at 37% and satellite internet at 31%.

Prior to launching its fiber subsidiary, Centranet, the cooperative’s 22 electrical substations had fiber communications, but that’s where the fiber stopped. Now, the fiber project is providing significant advantages and positioning of the cooperative for the future demands of the grid.

“Communicating with downline devices allows for a preemptive strategy that could avoid outages and assist with predicting the location of faults,” Robinson said. ”Ultimately, these steps will increase system reliability and safety. Expanding fiber communications throughout our entire service area will increase our connectivity in the field, as well as allow for more automation capabilities, which will make us more efficient and benefit our members.”

Centranet LLC is a locally-owned and operated subsidiary of Central Rural Electric Cooperative located in Stillwater, Okla., and is a member of the Cooperative Broadband Coalition.

In the 1930s and 1940s, quality of life in rural Oklahoma and rural America blossomed with first-time access to electricity. Rural electric cooperatives energized sparsely populated communities bringing vitality and prosperity.

Today’s generations in rural America meet a different challenge: they need reliable access to broadband to foster that same vitality and prosperity in the communities they call home. Rising to the challenge are several rural electric cooperatives.

Nine distribution electric cooperatives that are members of the Oklahoma Association of Electric Cooperatives (OAEC) have formed fiber subsidiaries to provide broadband access in their service areas. These cooperatives have banded together to form the Cooperative Broadband Coalition (CBC) to advance the mission of rural broadband and to collectively represent the interests of those they serve.

The CBC is an independent organization that is affiliated with the statewide association, OAEC, which is voluntarily supported by 30 member-systems: 27 distribution electric cooperatives and three generation and transmission electric cooperatives.

“Electric cooperatives exist to serve their member-owners,” said Chris Meyers, OAEC general manager. “We commend the cooperatives that have been able to expand their service to provide rural broadband to the communities they serve. This essential service brings a significant positive impact to rural areas.”

The electric cooperative business model is based on member ownership and the delivery of a service that benefits all members. While conditions are unique for every electric cooperative, the co-ops that have been able to form a fiber subsidiary were able to do so based on accessibility of grants and other favorable economic conditions. A few other electric cooperatives are actively pursuing the formation of a fiber subsidiary while others partner with existing providers, when feasible, to extend service to their rural membership.

This is what we call the cooperative difference.

OzarksGo, a telecommunications subsidiary of Ozarks Electric Cooperative, began in 2016 with the goal of providing fiber-to-the-home service to the cooperative’s 80,000 members across Northwest Arkansas and Northeast Oklahoma.

At the beginning of the project, nearly half of the cooperative’s members did not have access to high-speed broadband. Just as rural electric cooperatives brought power to communities that were not served by large, for-profit utilities, cooperative broadband projects are bringing this century’s critical service to underserved areas.

“Since we are community-focused, we knew our communities needed broadband, and we wanted to close the digital divide for the communities we serve,” said Mitchell Johnson, President and CEO of Ozarks Electric.

OzarksGo began installations for Oklahoma members in 2018. It now has more than 6,700 customers in Oklahoma and over 1,500 miles of fiber benefitting residential and commercial members in Adair, Cherokee, Delaware and Sequoyah counties. The network also benefits Ozarks Electric members by improving the cooperative’s ability to monitor and control the grid to reduce costs and outages.

OzarksGo also serves residents and businesses in the city of Stilwell. After the city lost its cable provider, a majority of residents voted to allow OzarksGo to take over the existing cable plant.

Delivering high internet speeds at an affordable price has allowed more opportunities for local business, such as supporting modern cloud-based software that can lower costs and increase productivity. OzarksGo’s service became even more important during the pandemic, when children sent home from school and workers sent home from the office needed reliable connections for remote work and learning, highlighting the necessity of high-quality internet service.

“Building a state-of-the-art fiber network from scratch is not an easy task, but we believe high-speed internet access is a critical service in the 21st Century, whether you live in an urban area or a rural part of the county,” said Steve Bandy, General Manager of OzarksGo.

Since installing its first customer in 2017, OzarksGo has been building its fiber network across Northwest Arkansas and Northeast Oklahoma, and installed its 30,000th customer earlier this year.

Oklahoma’s electric cooperatives power the lives of more than 523,000 Oklahomans. With infrastructure in all 77 counties, co-ops serve 93% of the state’s landmass. Collectively, Oklahoma’s electric cooperatives are committed to delivering power that is safe, reliable, affordable and environmentally responsible.

Electric cooperatives go where no one would go. Serving primarily rural areas, the electric cooperatives of Oklahoma own and maintain nearly 123,000 miles of power line. That is a lot of ground to cover, but that is what electric cooperatives do: they serve every member at the end of the line. Cooperatives own and maintain more powerlines than all other electric utilities in the state combined.

Co-ops are locally owned by the members they serve and governed by an elected board of directors who are consumer-members of the cooperative. Committed to powering lives and empowering communities, co-ops are guided by 7 Cooperative Principles.

One of those key principles is Concern for Community. This principle has propelled several electric cooperatives to go beyond providing safe, reliable and affordable power and expand services to offer fiber-to-the-home access to many of their members and local businesses, helping bridge the digital divide.

Cooperatives are different because they genuinely care about the quality of life of the communities they serve. The Cooperative Broadband Coalition is paving the way to bring the vital service of rural broadband to those who don’t have it. This is the cooperative difference.

Rick and Tracy Roberts could probably run Stilwell Hardware Inc. without internet service — but not for very long, Rick said. The local hardware store’s inventory, point-of-sale and security systems are all cloud-based and rely on a stable internet connection to function.

“We were doing backflips when we discovered OzarksGo was coming in our area,” Tracy said. “We signed up as soon as we could. The internet is way faster. It’s been solid and reliable, so that’s been a huge bonus for us.”

The hardware store was founded in 1939 by John Smay and Vance Hill, and has been through a series of owners — including Jack and Joyce Smay, who ran the store from 1972 to 2004 and still stop by to help out. The Robertses bought the store in 2010.

Located on Second Street near downtown Stilwell, the store carries a range of hardware, tools, electric and plumbing supplies and lawn and garden goods. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the store primarily served business and government customers, Tracy said.

However, they have seen an increase in homeowners and DIYers shopping at the store since the pandemic caused supply-chain issues for online retailers and made crowded big-box retailers seem more dangerous, she said. The store’s catalogue is on its website, and customers can call in to place an order and request curbside pickup.

The Robertses said almost every aspect of their business is somehow connected to the internet.

They have a cloud-based inventory and point-of-sale system, so when they make a sale, place an order or take a delivery, their inventory is automatically updated. They use the internet to stream product training and employee training videos, and to remotely monitor their security system. They also use the internet to access parts suppliers’ systems, so they can look up an equivalent part number for a small engine repair, for example.

Tracy said the service they had before OzarksGo would often go down, leaving them unable to look up parts or take credit card payments.

“We would literally have to tell our customers, sorry, but the system is down or our internet is down,” she said. “Obviously that’s very inconvenient.”

In addition to the quality of the service, the Robertses also said they appreciated the price — their monthly bill for telephone and internet service was cut nearly in half when they switched to OzarksGo — and especially the fact that OzarksGo is a local company with ties to the community. Some of their employees have gone on to work for Ozarks Electric, and Tracy’s father is a retired Ozarks Electric lineman.

“I guess you could say she’s an Ozarks baby,” Rick joked.

The Robertses are planning to move the business into a new, larger building near the Stilwell Walmart, and explore additional offerings such as a garden center. One thing that won’t change, though, is their internet provider. The new building is in an area served by OzarksGo.

“We won’t consider anything else,” Tracy said.

Taking high speed internet where no one else will has been a cornerstone of OEC Fiber’s mission from the beginning.

According to the National Center of Education Statistics, nearly 30 percent of Oklahoma homes do not have internet access. Over the past decade, internet connectivity has arguably become as essential as electricity, yet over one quarter of homes in our state have little to no access.

Jerry Love was a part of that 30 percent. While there was DSL in his area of Choctaw, Oklahoma, the unreliable connection and snail’s pace speed of 2 Mbps made it next to non-existent.

“My data connection on my [cell] phone was probably 10x faster,” Jerry said.

He thought his fortunes had changed for the better when he saw the cable company installing service on his road. Maybe, just maybe, slower than dial-up speeds would become a thing of the past.

There was just one problem, it wasn’t available at his address. He could look out of his front door, through his wooded yard and see the connection on the pole. Construction was complete, but he still didn’t have access to the service.

Jerry’s inability to connect would not come from a lack of effort on his part, “After months of calling them, they finally gave me a quote…”

Running the service from the pole into his home would come with a $2200 price tag. He could purchase a brand-new washer and dryer set for less than what it would cost to have the cable company bring him internet.

And like the spin feature on the washer Jerry could’ve purchased, the tables turned for him when OEC Fiber became available in his area.

“All I can say is thank you OEC for stepping up and providing super high-quality service,” Jerry said.

Jerry is not the only subscriber that has done battle with other companies to stay connected. This is just one of the countless stories of how OEC Fiber has stepped in and changed daily living for countless subscribers.