Jasper — At the Dec. 4 meeting of the Hamilton County Board of County Commissioners, vice mayor of White Springs Walter McKenzie and Richelle Sucara, executive director of the North Florida Broadband Authority (NFBA) spoke about the merits of the county continuing as a member of the NFBA and the board agreed to stay for the time being.

According to the NFBA, they are a government entity established for the purpose of bringing broadband services to the North Florida region, and they operate much like independent water, sewer and electrical utilities, in order to provide high-speed broadband access.

Their purpose is to promote economic development and as a result of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, they were awarded $30,142,676 to make the project happen. 
They were initially funded with a grant from the National Telecommunications Information Administration and 20 member counties and municipalities each contributed in-kind assets, including the use of existing towers and other infrastructure. Using grant money, two data centers were established and four distribution hubs were placed in the NFBA region. A reliable, cost-efficient wireless network distributes the service across the region.

Progress regressed last fall when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Acquisition and Grants (NOAA) suspended funding to the NFBA due to allegations of waste in the project. The Government Services Group and Capitol Solutions, two private companies who were contracted for the NFBA, resigned last October.

GSG remained onboard to assist the NFBA during its reorganization. They submitted a plan of corrective action and awaited the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to restore the project’s funding.

Counties that could be served include Baker, Bradford, Columbia, Dixie, Gilchrist, Hamilton, Jefferson, Lafayette, Levy, Madison, Putnam, Suwannee, Taylor, Union and Wakulla.

Some counties stated they hadn’t received the necessary information they needed about NFBA and to date, five counties have withdrawn, most recently Lafayette County on Dec. 10. Suwannee County is considering withdrawing as well, for the same reason.

By withdrawing from the NFBA it doesn’t mean there is no coverage, Sucara stated, it just means they don’t have a voice in the organization.
DirectCONNECT is NFBA’s new high-speed broadband service specifically for community anchor institutions, including schools and libraries, hospitals and clinics, and government and emergency service providers. Most residential and business users would purchase high-speed service from NFBA’s retail partner, Suwannee Valley Internet Corporation of Chiefland. 



McKenzie serves on the NFBA board and admitted he wasn’t a technical type person.

“I didn’t know the difference between a megabyte and a kilowatt for a long time,” he said. “They’re two entirely different things, but I do know something about economic development and I know something about the needs of our county.”

Although he is on the NFBA board, McKenzie said he was there at the meeting as a citizen of Hamilton County. He advised the board that White Springs agreed to be a part of the program because in order to attract new business, the town must be able to compete with other cities by offering high speed Internet. McKenzie said he has seen prospective homebuyers pass up bargain real estate deals simply because there is inadequate or no Internet or cell phone access in the area.

“If an individual is going to do that, you know a business is going to do that,” he said.

McKenzie stressed that if Hamilton County hopes to have a new healthcare facility, they need to ensure the county has high speed Internet or else it won’t be feasible for a healthcare company to come in.

With advances in digital technology, including education platforms, having high speed Internet access is vital to success, McKenzie added. He noted that one school in the region had to wait until the facility was closed for a holiday in order to do program updates because it took two days to download all the data.

“They recently did a DirectCONNECT with the NFBA and they now do it in about two hours,” said McKenzie.

McKenzie said White Springs pledged two water towers as an in-kind contribution for antennas and it didn’t cost the town a dime to be a part of the NFBA. He urged the commissioners to maintain their membership in the NFBA. Even though it hasn’t been a smooth road for the NFBA since their inception, McKenzie said he felt all concerns had been addressed and answered.

“We’re not here now in the north part of the county, but we’re coming,” he said. “We’re hooking up people in the White Springs area and they’re doing quality tests on their signal there. We’re going to start expanding into Hamilton County.”

Sucara spoke next, particularly about last-mile providers.

“With 57 days left under the project we are basically focused on commissioning the in-kind assets,” Sucara said. “We would certainly like to acquire site lease arrangements on all of the Hamilton County in-kind assets, so we can come to Hamilton County and begin to roll out service and actually penetrate into the community.”

Sucara said they are currently serving about 500 customers throughout the region and they have about $3.2 million left out of the grant money.

“We’re using the remaining grant proceeds to offer free installations,” said Sucara. “We managed our grant pretty prudently and had some remaining money. We had a choice to either send it back to the federal government or we could choose to invest it in the community. We chose to offer free installations for basically those community anchor institutions.”

The board questioned the distance between the NFBA antennas and resultant coverage area and how it would benefit all the rural areas in the county. Sucara said it depended on topography, but that they can be as far away as eight miles.

Commissioner Josh Smith asked whether the NFBA will be able to sustain itself and have the customer-based support necessary once the grant money runs out and Sucara said she felt confident it would. The board agreed to stay put for the time being and see how things play out.