A nonprofit outfit in Pennsylvania and a private company from West Virginia — both in the broadband business — are partnering to bring high-speed internet access to a poorly served area of southwest Pennsylvania.
The nonprofit Keystone Initiative for Network Based Education and Research, of Harrisburg, and Morgantown-based ClearFiber Communications are planning to string an 81-mile broadband cable through parts of Washington and Greene counties and Waynesburg University.
That cable, which is expected to serve more than 2,000 homes, will offer 100 gigabit capability and is scheduled to be ready by early 2021, according to Nathan Flood, Kinber’s interim director and CEO.
The 81-mile cable will end near California, Pa., where Kinber already provides service to California University of Pennsylvania.
“Other organizations have expressed interest in connecting,” Mr. Flood said. “There are other opportunities that we haven’t finalized yet.”
Greene and Washington counties are rural or semi-rural parts of southwest Pennsylvania with spotty or slow internet speeds, according to a study last year by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, a Harrisburg-based nonprofit.
Although Kinber doesn’t serve residential customers, its maximum speed of 100 gigabit of data transfer per second — or 100,000 megabits — is exponentially faster than the average internet speed in Greene County of 7.2 megabits per second or Washington County, 10.3 megabits per second.
The Federal Communications Commissions defines 25 megabits per second as broadband access. Slower speeds can mean extended time downloading information or images from the internet, making research difficult for students and reducing the quality of Netflix movies.
The public-private partnership was made possible by a $200,000 grant organized through the office of state Rep. Pam Snyder, D-Greene County, who said she’d been working on pulling together the project for well over a year.
“When it finally came together, I had tears rolling down my cheeks,” said Ms. Snyder, an outspoken advocate for expanding broadband services to rural Pennsylvania. “We must find solutions to these problems. This is every bit as important as water, sewer, electricity.”
Kinber, which was established in 2010 with a $99.6 million grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, is a nonprofit membership organization that’s dedicated to expanding digital access for research and education. The University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon and Duquesne universities and Community College of Allegheny County are among Kinber clients.
Although Waynesburg University “already has excellent broadband service,” Stacey Brodak, vice president for institutional advancement and university relations, said in an email that the new line will be a fiber backbone necessary to bring broadband to businesses beyond the university.
The cable will stretch from California University of Pennsylvania through Washington, Pa., continue south through Waynesburg and eventually end in Morgantown. ClearFiber will construct the mostly overhead cable, with Kinber sharing line capacity.
Kris B. Mamula: kmamula@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1699
First Published: May 3, 2020, 4:00 a.m.
