Increasing County's Internet Speeds Focus of Committee

RISON - County Judge Jimmy Cummings appointed a Cleveland County Broadband Committee Monday night that will develop a plan to utilize grant money to expand high speed internet service into the rural areas of the county. Those assigned to the committee were Justice of the Peace Bruce Brown of the Pansy community, Dianne Chambers of New Edinburg, Justice of the Peace Donnie Herring of the Pleasant Ridge community, Joyce Reynolds of Rison, Britt Talent of the Bowman community, Danielle Watson of the Cleveland County Cooperative Extension Service, and Bracy Young of the Rye community. Four of the committee members - Brown, Herring, Talent and Young - were also members of a local committee that participated in the Accelerate Arkansas program last year. Accelerate Arkansas was a 15-week program that helped five communities across the state develop a long-range plan to bring high speed internet to their communities. Rally Networks, the only internet service provider in the county, is currently wrapping up installation of new fiber optic networks within the county's two incorporated cities, Kingsland and Rison. Both of those networks are capable of delivering internet speeds of up to 2 gigabytes (2,000 megabytes) per second. Bruce Grubb, the Cleveland County manager for Rally Networks, said they are in the finishing stages of having the network in place at Kingsland and should begin contacting customers next week about making arrangements to connect to the new high speed service. Grubb said Rally is bringing in some contractors next week to help with the backlog at Rison. He explained that connecting to the service does take some time since they must "plow" a fiber optic cable to the structure and then drop a box inside the house or building to enable the service. Glen Howie, director of the Arkansas State Broadband Office, encouraged the county to organize a formal broadband committee during a public meeting he...