Fiber is here for Cumberland Electric Membership Corporation members

Cumberland Electric Membership Corporation has completed its fiber network buildout across its five-county service area, providing more than 109,000 homes and businesses fiber service access.

“At Cumberland Electric, our mission has been to connect and empower our members since rural electrification over 80 years ago,” Chris A. Davis, CEMC’s general manager, says. “Like electricity, internet access is a vital utility that enables economic growth and educational opportunities and provides access to essential services.”

Internet access hasn’t always been as easy to come by though for rural areas of middle Tennessee. After the passing of the Broadband Accessibility Act of 2017, the co-op conducted a thorough study across their membership to assess the need and interest of a fiber network. The findings showed that seven out of ten members expressed support for the internet services and an overwhelming nine out of ten members emphasized that reliable internet access is essential to modern life. These results led to the launch of Cumberland Connect and the initiative to build a state-of-the-art fiber network for the community.

“Initially, the whole reason CEMC was created was because no one was taking electricity to rural America. Now, that need is being repeated with broadband,” Mark T. Cook, P.E., CEMC’s manager of broadband division, says. “No one was taking it to rural America. That is literally what we exist to do, to provide this kind of service to our members.”

This project began back in November 2019 and now 5,291 miles of fiber line connect 39,000 members and 1,300 businesses to fast, reliable and affordable fiber internet service.

“No other provider has ever gone to some of the places we’ve gone with internet. This is a difference-maker for our members,” Cook says. “High-speed internet is an absolutely critical utility in today’s world. More people are working from home. Children are being homeschooled. We’re in the early stages of telemedicine, where we will talk to our doctors online. But if you don’t have high-speed internet, you cannot do any of these things. That’s the need we’re filling.”