Part II: Steep Costs for Broadband

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Nov 24, 2021
Key Points
  • Hundreds of thousands of families and businesses across the state lack reliable modern-day internet to tackle their jobs and attend school.
  • Around $700 million could help bridge the digital divide between Georgia’s urban and rural counties.
  • Costs of building broadband – at several thousand dollars per location – highlights the need for local governments to keep providers from duplicating service or cherry-picking easier-to-reach areas.
It can cost between $1,000 and $3,000 or more to string a fiber-optic cable out to a single home or business in Georgia, making it difficult to bring fast internet out to places like Crisp County. Costs for upcoming large-scale broadband expansion projects range depending on location and type of service, according to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) data: Roughly $3,000 per location for telecommunications company Windstream to build fiber-optic lines and wireless transmission towers for about 48,000 homes and businesses ...