The Home Page Network

In this day and age, internet access is crucial wherever you live. Having reliable and fast internet in rural areas used to be nearly unheard of, until now. In today’s broadcast, Home Page correspondent Rhonda Pearson spoke with Tri-Co Connections Senior Vice President of Business Development Bill Gerski and Director of Regulatory Affairs Rachel Hauser of Tri-County Rural Electric Cooperative.

“Tri-Co Connections is a subsidiary of Tri-County Rural Electric Cooperative and their goal is to provide quality broadband to rural Pennsylvania and break the digital divide and bring rural Pennsylvania into the 20th century.” said Gerski.

Rachel explained the relationship between Tri-County Rural Electric Cooperative and Tri-Co Connections, “The Electric Company is member-owned and serves seven counties…the cooperative owns the fiber asset because it is used for the electric side as well. But partnered with Tri-Co Connections to provide service to the end customer.”

Despite being an electric company, the Board of Directors heard from their memberships that they didn’t have very good internet service and they took those comments to heart. They began looking for a way to bridge the digital divide and bring this service to their customers.

The partnership is considering two potential bandwidth speed packages; one is 100 Mbps both up and down symmetrical and the other package is 1000 Mbps (or 1Gbps). These speeds should help residents in rural areas to work from home, stream videos, and just about anything else that a slow connection used to hinder.

Service is currently up and running in Potter County, but over the next five years they will offer services in Bradford County, Lycoming County, Tioga County, Clinton County, McKean County and Cameron County.

If you would like to know more about Tri-Co Connections, you can visit their website
https://www.tricoconnections.com/