Small Town Ingenuity
Tim Johnson grew up in Edmeston, NY in the 1950s, Johnson was raised by Richard and Jean Johnson. Richard was a private practice lawyer in Edmeston as well as some of the surrounding towns and villages. After growing up in Edmeston, Tim raised his own family there with his wife Vicki and their three children.
For 27 years Tim Johnson worked as a private practice lawyer in Otsego County, during that time he also worked as outside legal counsel for Otsego Electric Cooperative. After 27 years Johnson decided to take on a position with the legal counsel of the National Rural Electric Cooperative of America in Arlington, Virginia.
Fast forward a few years, Tim Johnson came upon the opportunity to work for his local electric cooperative. The Chief Executive Officer position at the Otsego Electric Cooperative, only two towns over from him, was open. Otsego Electric Cooperative is a very small company with less than 20 employees, the board at OEC hired Johnson in hopes he would look into ways to bring better broadband service to these rural towns. The company at that time had a satellite internet service they were providing which was becoming inadequate with changing technology. Not only was this satellite internet inadequate but was also expensive for the users.
“We knew in order to attract and/or to keep younger customers and generations in this area that we needed to upgrade our network. OEC wanted to do what we could to support economic development for the future and to present opportunities to everyone in our system to be able to telework, do schooling, have access to professional development, and use telemedicine.” Johnson said.
When looking into funding for this new broadband project OEC was going to take on, Johnson came across an auction for NYS companies looking to build new projects, in the first round of the auction they bid to win $4 million, this wasn’t enough money but enough to get the project off the ground. Going into the last round of bidding for the project the company applied again and received $10 million more towards the project.
$14 million was exactly what OEC needed. The 14 million dollars the company received was enough for them to bring broadband to the company’s customers, approximately a 700-mile system. With money being leftover the company was able to build out to other customers as well, not under OEC jurisdiction, but they were able to opt in for the high-speed internet that was being provided.
In early 2019 the project really took off, from there the fiber tech specialists went from home-to-home hooking customers up to the broadband. These specialists were able to hook up around 25 customers a week.
By November, 2019 OEC had connected their 500th broadband customer, and by this time their fiber optic project was labeled OEConnect.
OEConnect had become a huge project for rural areas in New York, and with their lead many rural cooperatives in America have followed.
In March 2020, New York State was shutdown. The coronavirus pandemic caused many businesses to close their doors and work from home, for OEC they are considered an essential business because they provide electricity and broadband to Otsego County.
But the shutdown brought a huge need for high-speed internet, OEConnect was constantly getting phone calls to see how soon customers could get connected to broadband. With such a need for high-speed internet in these areas and almost all things being moved to remote OEC had to work overtime to help their customers.
After hiring another fiber specialist OEConnect went from hooking up 25 customers a week to 50 or more, all while wearing protective equipment inside customers houses to protect the customers and employees from getting sick.
“Our fiber project created so many opportunities for our customers and with the Coronavirus pandemic the project proved to be a great thing to do. We started planning this project 3 and a half years ago and with the pandemic everything came out almost perfectly timed, we were extremely lucky. Today we have 2,500 households connected to our high-speed internet and plan to expand as much as possible with more project auctions and bidding in New York State.” Johnson stated.
