ATMC Announces $100 Million Fiber Broadband Project in North Carolina

The Atlantic Telephone Membership Cooperative announced a multi-year, $100 million-dollar construction project to replace all of its copper and coaxial cable network within its Brunswick County (NC) service area with a new 100 percent fiber optic network. At the conclusion of this project, every cooperative member will have access to the company’s FOCUS Broadband fiber optic service with internet speeds up to one Gigabit. The project is expected to take up to eight years to complete and is slated to start in January of 2022. By constructing in the most densely populated communities first, the cooperative estimates that it can convert as many as 75 percent of homes and businesses to the new fiber optic network within the first 60 months. Over the past two years, ATMC has increased the maximum broadband speed delivered via its DOCSIS cable modem technology from 200 Mbps to 600 Mbps. Over 22,000 customers had their download speeds doubled without an increase in price. The project to convert to 100 percent fiber optics will allow customers currently served by DOCSIS cable modem technology to have even faster speeds with much greater reliability.