Conexon Connect Completes First Major Florida Fiber Deployment
This is the sixth fiber project the company has completed nationwide.
Conexon Connect has completed its first fiber to the home project in Florida, a 2,000-mile network launched in partnership with Escambia River Electric Cooperative.
In a public statement, Conexon noted that this was the sixth fiber project they’ve completed nationwide with fiber Internet access being delivered to 12,000 EREC members.
"Over the past two years, we've worked tirelessly to bring this critical infrastructure to every EREC member in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties," EREC CEO Ryan Campbell said of the milestone. "Today, every member of our cooperative has access to fast, reliable Internet, which is not just about improving connectivity – it's about enhancing quality of life, fostering economic growth and ensuring that no one in our community is left behind in the digital age.”
Conexon’s Alexis Madison told ILSR that the EREC project will be financed with approximately $21.8 million in grants, including an Escambia County grant of $6.3 million, two Broadband Opportunity Program grants totaling $5.9 million, and a Broadband Infrastructure Program grant of $9.6 million.
“As the fiber-to-the-home project for EREC has only recently been completed, we’re still in the process of reviewing and finalizing the total project costs,” Madison said.
The company wouldn't provide information on whether Conexon or EREC would own the finished fiber network, calling the information “proprietary.”
While prices vary depending on the market, Conexon Connect offers locals three tiers of service: symmetrical 100 megabit per second (Mbps) tier; symmetrical gig speed service; and a symmetrical 2.5 Gbps tier.
Conexon's impact in Florida spans five electric cooperatives' service territories, including Tri-County Electric Cooperative, Glades Electric Cooperative and EREC – as well as partnerships with Central Florida Electric Cooperative and Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative.
All told, those partnerships have seen investment totals of $260 million to deploy 9,000 miles of fiber reaching over 70,000 rural Floridians.
Glades Electric Cooperative and Conexon Connect announced the connection of their first fiber customer back in January of 2024.
Conexon was initially known for rural fiber-optic network design and construction, but launched its own last mile public facing retail ISP, Conexon Connect, in 2021. It now directly provides last mile access via networks across Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Missouri.
Cooperatives have been leveraging their nearly century-old experience at rural electrification (and combatting dominant regional monopoly apathy) to deliver fiber to regions long deemed too unprofitable to serve by Wall Street. EREC, first founded in 1939, is no exception.
“In rural areas across the state, there is only one group of people who truly care about getting broadband to every home in every rural area – not the telephone companies that have abandoned rural Florida, not the cable companies that never built to rural Florida – it is the rural electric cooperatives that have been serving their communities for over 85 years," Conexon co-CEO Jonathan Chambers says of his firm’s latest efforts.
"We are proud of the partnership we formed with Escambia River Electric Cooperative. In just eighteen months, we built a fiber broadband network to serve every member of the cooperative, a network that will last for decades to come,” Chambers added.
A version of this article was originally published on the website of the Institute for Local Self Reliance's Community Broadband Networks Initiative on Jan. 13, 2025, and is republished with permission.
