February 21, 2022, Aurora, Neb. — Hamilton Telecommunications, a local technology and telecommunications company was recently awarded several grants through the Nebraska Public Service Commission’s Broadband Bridge Grant Program. This additional funding will further enable Hamilton’s commitment to continue the construction to deliver fiber-to-the-home to 100 percent of former NCTC customers in Ansley, Arcadia, Burwell, Dannebrog, Rural Gibbon, Rural Ravenna, Sargent and additional rural areas within the service territory formerly served by NCTC. The company has begun construction planning for the fiber network in these areas with the goal to complete mainline fiber construction in the grant areas by July 1, 2023.
“We are very pleased to have been awarded the opportunity to continue to expand our fiber network in rural Nebraska,” said Dan Molliconi, Chief Operating Officer for Hamilton Telecommunications. “With this additional funding, we’ll be able to continue the goal of the previous NCTC owners to bring fiber to every home in the service territory. This was important to them, and it is important to us to make sure that 100 percent of the customers in our new exchange area will have fiber rolled out to them.”
The Nebraska Broadband Bridge Program was created to facilitate and fund the deployment of broadband networks in unserved and underserved areas of Nebraska. Qualifying projects must provide broadband internet service scalable to one hundred megabits per second for downloading and one hundred megabits per second for uploading.
An early adopter of fiber optic technology, Hamilton began burying fiber in its original local exchange area in Hamilton County in 1982. Over the course of the next forty years, Hamilton has continued to invest in its fiber infrastructure, expanding its network directly to the homes of customers in its local exchange service territory and surrounding areas.
“We know that the growing ‘Internet of Things’, including smart home and farming technologies, has greatly increased the need for more broadband. Fiber-to-the-home broadband is the highest standard of Internet service and will dramatically increase the reliability, speeds and services our customers can receive,” said John Nelson, President of Hamilton Telecommunications.
Customers in the eligible areas will have access to Hamilton services including Fiber-to-the-Home data plans with speeds up to 1 Gig, Managed Wi-Fi, Cobalt TV, and telephone service. Residents of these areas who are not currently customers of NCTC will also have the opportunity to get connected to Fiber to the Home once construction has begun in their area.
“Our communities are great places for our residents to live, work and play, and we want to ensure that they have access to the best connectivity to Internet, video, managed wi-fi services and more,” said Molliconi.
In addition to construction in the recently acquired NCTC communities, Hamilton is concurrently in the middle of a multi-year fiber construction process to deliver fiber to the home for 100% of customers in the communities and rural areas of Aurora, Hampton, Giltner, Marquette, Hordville, Stockham, Phillips, Doniphan and Trumbull, as well as Central City. The company has multiple crews working on these projects to maintain the timeline designated by the grants and to continue its ongoing efforts to reach customers in its local telephone exchange area with fiber-to-the-home.
Hamilton Telecommunications is a diversified telecommunications and technology services provider based in Aurora, Neb. Founded in 1901, Hamilton Telecommunications encompasses eight primary company divisions that allow Hamilton to operate on a local, regional and national basis.