T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA Belmont Gig placing high speed fiber optic internet in underserved areas in Belmont County.

MARTINS FERRY — An agreement between the Belmont County Port Authority and Belmont Gig, a subsidiary of Ohio Gig, will see high-speed fiber optic internet being placed in underserved areas in the county.

“They are providing high speed service not on poles, but underground, which is a little bit more of a tedious process,” Belmont County Commissioner J.P. Dutton said. “It’s a little more hardened and provides less likely outages. These are in areas that either were underserved or, in some cases, not served by these types of speeds.

“They’re currently in the Barnesville areas where primarily, most of their work is done,” he continued. “Laying this network in the ground is a great asset for Belmont County down the road.”

Dutton added that, in order to upgrade those lines, it doesn’t necessarily mean that all of the lines will need to be replaced, because upgrades can be made on the ends of lines.

“These lines can last for an extremely long time. It’s a great partnership and the program is working very well,” he said.

The project was started with American Recovery Plan Act dollars, Dutton said, which are federal dollars that were provided to Belmont County.

“This is a $2 million loan, what we’re talking about in terms of the funding and the partnership,” he said. “It’s a $2 million loan that started in Belmont County through the commissioners to the Port Authority, and then a direct agreement between the Port Authority and Belmont Gig.

“That is a loan, not a grant. We had the ability to provide direct grant funds and a lot of counties did that,” Dutton added. “We saw an opportunity to do a loan, and as that’s paid back, we can then get a second use of those dollars. So in a sense, we’re getting $2 million of fiber optic cable in the ground in Belmont County, with the potential of then reutilizing those dollars again afterwards.”

He added that WesBanco is part of this project as well, providing loan support.

“By all indicators, the project is progressing very nicely. I think they would like to be a little bit further ahead, but it’s been successful thus far,” he said.

Belmont County Port Authority Executive Director Larry Merry said that he initially met with Belmont Gig in 2020 to discuss the possibility of making this project possible.

“They had an interest in here, they were already in southwestern Ohio and they were looking to start in eastern Ohio just to kind of prove their business plan as to what they were doing, where they were trying to go all underground, at least every place that it could be feasible,” Merry said. “Underground fiber is a lot more secure than having it on poles, which are susceptible to weather, storms, and trees

“I look at it as a permanent infrastructure,” he added. “I look at underground fiber as a much more valuable infrastructure than having it hanging on poles.”

Merry envisions the partnership with the Port Authority and Belmont Gig will continue for the next 20 to 30 years continuing to expand service to areas as housing developments develop and the community grows.

Belmont Gig owner Nicholas Hunter started the company because his family farm in Warren County needed underground high speed fiber.

“We wanted to bring the best internet in the world to places that have only ever had the worst and that was our farm. That’s where we grew up, near Cincinnati and we had DSL internet in 2019, So we were 15 to 20 years behind age,” Hunter said. “We had no help coming, there was no company that was willing to invest anything more in our area so we took on that responsibility ourselves and decided to begin and start a business to do that. And as we evolved doing that in our pilot build by our family farm near Cincinnati.”

He added that once his family’s farm project was completed he began to look outwards to other counties that might have the same issues that his family did and found that there were many rural counties in the state that needed help.

“Belmont County was the second county we went to under this thesis to bring the best internet in the world. We started the Belmont County gig and frankly, had a slow start. We had some issues with getting land that we needed to build our first data center, and that delayed us almost a year. But since then, we’ve been building fiber to the home internet west of St. Clairsville,” he said. “We have a wonderful relationship with Larry and the team. They’ve been a long time partner of ours, their support is very important,” Hunter said.

He added that he’s proud of the team that’s working together to help get these underserved residents high speed internet.