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…

 Alex Andrews, a fiber technician for OzarksGo, installs a Wi-Fi access point near the square in Stilwell, Oklahoma, to provide easier access to the internet during the COVID-19 pandemic. 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…

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:…