Estherville City Council Hears Update On Fiber Optics Project
Estherville City Council Hears Update On Fiber Optics Project
April 05, 2022Steve Schwaller
(Estherville)– The Estherville City Council Monday evening was updated on a project by Estherville Communications which is extending new fiber optics services to the community, including broadband internet. Company spokesman Doug Boone told the council work on extending the service to the business corridor in Estherville has been completed. He says the next phase of the project is about to kick into high gear…
“But our 2022 plans are to go everything north of Highway 9 and everything east of the river, and that’s about 1,400 locations that we hope to begin construction beginning about June 15th. We have a contractor in place and if you have, everybody’s been paying attention so supply chain type issues, but a year ago already we were in the process of talking to our contractor and saying we need fiber in the yard, we need pedestals, we need splice cases, all the equipment that you need. So we actually started a year ago and our contractor has hundreds of miles of fiber ready to go for this project.”
Boone says the rest of the build out for the remainder of the Estherville exchange area is scheduled for the fall of 2023 or spring of 2024. He says a portion of the project is being funded through a statewide $200 million broadband grant program…
“We were awarded $4,514,000 to offset the cost of building the rural area around Estherville. The timing for that, because of when we can get access to the funds, would start next summer in 2023 and in the fall of 2023, and then we would do phase two, that’s basically the rest of town, at the same time. So that brings the total cost of the town of Estherville plus the rural area around Estherville, to about 22 million dollars, of which, again, four and a half million would be a grant that we would receive from the state.”
Boone added that Estherville Communications won’t get reimbursed by the grant until the project is completed.
