Adtran and Cookson Hills Electric Cooperative recharge rural Oklahoma with RDOF-funded fiber broadband solutions

Adtran®, Inc., (NASDAQ: ADTN),the leading provider of next-generation multigigabit fiber access and fiber extension solutions, today announced it is helping Cookson Hills Electric Cooperative (CHEC) build its own fiber broadband network to reach underserved homes and businesses in rural Oklahoma. CHEC chose a portfolio of Adtran’s end-to-end fiber broadband solutions to deliver reliable, affordable internet that will support its community’s broadband needs today and is easily scalable to support their future demands and new applications.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, only half of CHEC’s electric members had email access and even fewer were able to access any form of reliable internet from their homes. The need for connectivity intensified during work-from-home and remote learning periods, leaving many residents with no other choice but to move away to communities that offered high-speed broadband. There was an obvious and critical need for better infrastructure, so CHEC committed to build it. The co-op was awarded $4M through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) bidding process and worked with their expert partners to build the best fiber network to fit the community’s need.

CHEC found Adtran through Conexon, a rural fiber network design and construction management partner. The co-op is leveraging an end-to-end fiber broadband solution from Adtran that enables CHEC to deliver a managed subscriber experience for both residents and businesses. The Adtran global services supported solutions used for this deployment, included the Adtran 10Gbit/s fiber access platform used to connect homes and businesses and the Adtran cloud-managed Wi-Fi solution which will maximize the subscriber experience and streamline customer care. 

“Adtran is a great partner. They are focused on what is best for CHEC and what they can do to help our community and our network build, instead of focusing on a sale,” said Juli Orme, GM at Cookson Hills Electric Cooperative. “That type of customer support combined with a turnkey fiber solution gives me peace-of-mind that our network has the foundation needed to serve our members for decades to come.”

Families are now benefitting from better broadband connectivity allowing them to easily work, learn and play from home, and businesses are connecting to better opportunities as well. Many small businesses had been forced to rent office space in towns with better internet access but they can now work out of their homes and save both time and money. Other businesses are leveraging connected devices to make operations more efficient. For example, a local veterinarian can leverage remote cameras in her birthing barns instead of needing staff present 24/7 to monitor the facilities. The region is also experiencing a resurgence in poultry and growth in medical marijuana farms—both industries rely on connectivity to efficiently monitor operations and meet technical industry requirements.

“We’re excited to help so many new types of service providers, like CHEC, take fiber into their own hands and bring better broadband to their bandwidth-starved communities,” said Craig Stein, VP Americas and head of global business development at Adtran. “Our solutions enable CHEC to deliver high-speed multigigabit internet across a reliable fiber network that will serve its members for many years. Not only will residents and businesses be able to connect to new economic opportunities, but CHEC can also leverage the strong fiber network for their own power grid modernization pursuits too.”