After years of both work and anticipation, modern internet is set to begin being installed in Sabine Parish over the coming year, and information regarding such was released at a public meeting hosted last week by the Sabine Parish Tourist Commission. “This has been a long journey and we are excited to get to the next phase,” said Executive Director of the Sabine Parish Tourist Commission Georgia Craven at the start of the meeting.
The meeting outlined what can be expected in the coming year, which is that Optimum (formerly Suddenlink) and Swyft will be expanding to more than 3,000 locations in the next 12 months. The new connections will be state of the art broadband with available speed for residential addresses going up to one gigabit speeds for both downloads and uploads.
It was later noted that FCC funded the 8,606 potential spots that are underserved in the Parish. Further funding is set for this summer, which will more fully fill in the gaps in Sabine Parish. They noted that Internet expansion to the parish is not a matter of if, but when. Others that have bad and slow connections will also receive the newer service. The costs of internet service were also released, which will see multiple options, but a 100Mb upload and download speed with no cap on data will cost $29.99 while the 1Gbps option is $79.99. For some that meet qualifications, there will be a $14.99 plan that offers 50Mbps download and 5Mbps upload speeds. Those in attendance noted that not all questions had answers currently, but that the building timeframe is locked in stone and the Internet upgrades are indeed happening. Those in attendance who were set to begin the installations laid out what help they were going to need, with much of it being in permitting and the work force. More meetings are expected in the coming weeks and months, with more information being released. In the meantime, there is a map available at the website www. connect.la.gov that shows the addresses ready to be built to. In the near future there will be a process by which one can report addresses so that they don’t slip through