4-County Electric bringing reliable internet to rural Choctaw, Clay and Noxubee counties

CLAY COUNTY, MISS. (WCBI) – More than 80 years ago, 4-County Electric Power Association started bringing power to Mississippians who couldn’t get it any other way.

Now they want to do the same thing with the internet.

“Neither our cell service nor our internet is very reliable,” says Clay County resident Roy Shannon.

“We’re kind of in a dead zone, for whatever reason,” his wife Mary adds.

For many people, reliable internet access is something they can’t live without. But since the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s become a necessity.

“There’s a lot of education needs, kids need it to be able to do their homework and research and a lot of people need it for healthcare,” says 4-County Electric CEO Brian Clark.

But dependable access to the web is something residents in rural parts of Clay County have had to go without.

“We used to have to go into town and sit in the parking lot and use the internet,” Roy says.

That changed for the Shannon’s on Friday as they became the first customers to get broadband internet service in their region from FASTnet, a subsidiary of 4-County Electric. They now have close to 200 yards of fiber optic cable running under their property.

The Columbus-based utility company has launched a Broadband Pilot Project to provide internet service to customers in the rural areas of northeast Choctaw, west Clay and north Noxubee counties.

“There’s been a lot of discussion across the country about the lack of internet service in rural parts of America and people started equating that to the electricity they had in the 1930s,” Clark says.

The Shannons say this will be a huge help to them and their entire community.

“We’ve got friends who are working from home due to the virus and they have real problems with [the internet] too,” Mary says.

With $6 million from the Mississippi Electric Cooperatives Broadband COVID-19 Grant Program, Clark hopes to connect as many households as possible.

“It’s really evident that the internet is now a lifeline where it used to be entertainment and luxury,” Clark says. “No year’s been more evident of that than this year with COVID.”

Clark says there are more than 100 more customers in Clay County who have requested internet service from FASTnet. He says they hope to help connect all their nearly 24 hundred eligible members across Choctaw, Clay and Noxubee counties by the summer of 2021.