Broadband companies look to Lee County

BROADBAND PLANS

Quite honestly, this is the exact intent that we had hoped when we entered into the partnership with SIREPA and Lee County – to stimulate this kind of growth.”

Tim Fencl, Danville Telecom CEO

LEE COUNTY – The fiber optic improvements that were put in place with funding assistance from Lee County’s America Rescue Plan Act payments are already starting to pay off for county residents, according to the Southeast Iowa Regional and Economic Port Authority.
The county granted SIREPA $1.9 million to expand broadband services to underserved and unserved areas of the county and part of that expansion involved a redundant loop that was constructed by Danville Telecom near Keokuk.
That loop has fiber optic capacity to lease to other companies who can then come into the area to help provide additional internet service to homes in the county without having to make the same initial investment in infrastructure. It also serves as a backup for any outages Danville Telecom may experience in the area.
At Monday’s SIREPA board meeting, Danville Telecom CEO Tim Fencl updated the board on some new developments.
Danville Telecom has a 10-year lease on the infrastructure which is actually owned by SIREPA. That lease will result in payments over the 10 years of about $300,000 total to SIREPA to be used for additional broadband expansion in the area. The lease also allows for Danville Telecom to sublease space on the fiber optic “backbone”, with SIREPA’s consent.
Fencl said Danville has a request from a company that he said would have to remain anonymous.
“We at Danville received a request from another service provider that is interested in providing broadband services to businesses and residential customers in Lee County,” Fencl said.
“They specifically mentioned the communities of Fort Madison, Keokuk, Wever, and Montrose.”
He said the company wanted to lease fiber so they could create a network without having to build a large portion (of infrastructure) in between the communities.
“Quite honestly this is the exact intent that we had hoped when we entered into the partnership with SIREPA and Lee County – to stimulate this kind of growth,” he said.
“I think this is a good thing for Lee County and, specifically, those communities that this entity will serve.”
He also said he is negotiating with another entity and he will update the board and ask for a sublease with that entity, as well.
Fencl said he didn’t know the specifics about underserved and unserved in the communities the company is looking to serve, but he said through the zones that were utilized in some of the state grant funding, there were about 3,000 unserved locations in Lee County.
Some of those would address some of those 3,000 addresses. He said the companies looking to add service will be using grant funding that require them to address homes in the underserved and unserved zones, or about 2,400 homes total.
In an unrelated issue, the board reauthorized a three-year lease with Lee County Economic Development for operations of the LCEDG center in Montrose. LCEDG is responsible for paying all the mortgage payments and bills associated with the center. At the SIREPA board’s last meeting, the board approved another three-year interest-only mortgage with Connection Bank. LCEDG has been making interest-only payments on the mortgage since SIREPA purchased the building in 2022.