Georgia town gets connected

BellSouth has created its first “connected” community under a Georgia state program that gives telecom service providers special tax credits for making infrastructure improvements.

Swainsboro, a town of about 7000 people in the eastern part of the state near Savannah and Macon, will be the beneficiary of two remote terminals, to be installed by July of this year, and will thus exceed 80% availability of DSL service. It will also fund, along with BellSouth, an advertising and marketing campaign to promote Swainsboro as a good place to do business, based on its telecom infrastructure.

Georgia is the only state to have a cooperative program, under which telecom service providers fund infrastructure improvements through tax credits.

According to a BellSouth spokeswoman, towns and cities within Georgia can ask the telephone company to do an assessment of their current infrastructure status, using a 13-point checklist. The municipality funds the assessment, and contributes to the advertising/marketing campaign, along with BellSouth.

Swainsboro was the first community to seek an assessment, she said. “It’s a pretty rural area, but now its telecom infrastructure is as good as those in large metropolitan areas.”

Based on Swainsboro’s assessment, the community trailed the national average for DSL availability of 80%, but met other criteria. The installation of the two broadband gateways will get Swainsboro to that national average number, the spokeswoman said.