Spectrum, Oconee County announce broadband service to rural community
Folks in the southern end of Oconee County gathered for a check presentation recently to formally announce that Oconee County Animal Services now has broadband service.
“I can’t put it into words. It’s like night and day,” Crystal Berisko, the animal services manager, said Monday.
“It’s so much more efficient and we’re able to do upgrades on our databases because we have a large capacity to sort information,” she said.
Berisko was joined by officials from Spectrum, which is extending its broadband into this rural community, along with Oconee County Commission Chair John Daniell, and state Rep. Houston Gaines.
The broadband is being extended to homes and businesses in that area of the county, which includes the Farmington community.
Jamie Bellemare, Spectrum area vice president, also presented a $1,000 check on May 17 to the Friends of the Oconee County Animal Shelter, for its microchipping program.
Prior to having broadband installed, the animal control unit relied on DSL, a service that is connected with the phone system, but has a downside of being slow and limits on download speeds.
Berisko said the new fiber-optic network now available to southern Oconee County is making their work more efficient.
“We were trying to streamline things for a while, especially after the renovation projects we went through a couple of years ago,” she said.
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The shelter has a system of databases they use to correspond with veterinary clinics and other state agencies, she said.
“With the efficiency of this broadband, we can receive things electronically and its instantaneous, whereas before our connection was so slow it could take 10 to 15 minutes or two hours for something to come through,” Berisko said.
“I hope every agency that doesn’t have it will have access to it at some point. I know in Georgia we have a lot of rural agencies and a lot of the databases are cloud-based now,” she said.
Spectrum also announced when the buildout of the service is complete, these internet, mobile and TV services will be available to more than 3,100 homes and small businesses in the county.
The broadband work by Spectrum is the result of a federal Rural Digital Opportunity Fund along with investments from Oconee County and Spectrum, according to Spectrum.
The monetary donation goes to the shelter’s microchipping program.
“We have it in our county ordinance that any animal that comes in as a stray and is reclaimed by the owner they have to be microchipped at our shelter,” Berisko said.
Also any cat or dog adopted out of the shelter must be microchipped.
“A couple of times a year we do low cost or free microchipping clinic for county residents” she said.
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This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Spectrum advances broadband into southern parts of Oconee County
