Southern Tier 8 Regional Board working to expand broadband access in Southern Tier counties

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — The Southern Tier 8 Regional Board plans to explore the expansion of a middle mile fiber ring in Broome, Delaware, Schoharie, and Chenango counties.

Jen Gregory, executive director of the Southern Tier 8 Regional Board, made the announcement during the recent, inaugural Upstate Rural Broadband Conference in Binghamton.

The middle mile fiberoptic-infrastructure expansion would serve as the foundation for better internet connectivity and wireless services for residents and businesses, the regional board said.

Last fall, the Southern Tier 8 Regional Board announced Project Connect, an initiative to connect every home, business, and institution in Central New York and Southern Tier to high-speed broadband service. Expanding the middle mile fiber ring would support Project Connect, a spokesman for the Southern Tier 8 Regional Board tells CNYBJ in an email.

The board last November applied for a $22 million federal grant for Project Connect, which would connect nearly 900 homes to high-speed fiberoptic broadband for the internet.

The agency would use the grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to connect 895 residential addresses in the towns of Caroline, Coventry, Danby, German, Guilford, McDonough, Newfield, Oxford, and Taylor

All of the 895 addresses in the 10 towns are located in rural areas with no access to broadband service.

The board is hoping to hear soon if it secures the federal grant for the project, the spokesman said.

Nearly 200 government and community leaders, national broadband experts, and members of the business community attended the Upstate Rural Broadband Conference. Southern Tier 8 Regional Board and the Regional Broadband Collaborative hosted the event to “help build the future” of New York’s Southern Tier through high-speed broadband infrastructure and economic-development initiatives, Southern Tier 8 said.

The Southern Tier 8 Regional Board is an economic development and planning agency serving eight counties in the Southern Tier: Broome, Chenango, Cortland, Delaware, Otsego, Schoharie, Tioga, and Tompkins.