LAST-MILE GUIDE Leveraging KentuckyWired for local broadband deployment Phone: 606-677-6000 Address: Email:
[email protected] 2292 South Highway 27 Web: www.centertech.com Suite 300 Social Media: facebook.com/CRDbroadband Somerset, KY 42501 This Page Intentionally Left Blank The Center for Rural Development’s Fiber Infrastructure Project - Phase 3 is funded by grant KY-18984-17 from the Appalachian Regional Commission and is administered by The Center for Rural Development. Page 3 of 20 OVERVIEW The Last-Mile Action team was formed to help your community with the task of solving the “Last- Mile” dilemma that faces most of rural America. The team was created as a partnership between The Center for Rural Development, which works to positively impact the communities within 45 counties of Southern and Eastern Kentucky, and SOAR, part of whose mission it is to enhance opportunity and innovation in Appalachian Kentucky. The last-mile is the final bit of fiber optic cable, copper wire or radio transmission that goes from a home, business, school or hospital and connects into the “middle-mile” infrastructure. The middle-mile is typically an intra-state web of high-speed, high-capacity fiber optic cable that consolidates thousands of last-mile connections and gets them access to the national tier 1 internet providers. There have been numerous discussions with telecommunications providers over the years regarding improving service and widening availability of broadband access, but little to no improvement had taken place until the KentuckyWired initiative. The fiber infrastructure that exists in the service area is dated and is being used, for the most part, at capacity.