Little Dixie is a community precious to Randa Givens Gary and her family. It’s where she grew up. Where her late parents lived, farmed and created a global business. Where her family goes to church to worship.
But when it comes to internet service, it’s practically off the grid.
“Right now we are riding Verizon’s (cell tower-powered) hot spots at home, which are not ideal for sure,” Gary said.
A short distance away at the offices of Givens International Drilling Supplies Inc. — the business her mother, Susie Givens, established and for which Randa Gary is now president— internet service through a commercial cellular plan is somewhat better. “If it’s not windy or cloudy,” she said.
“And it’s very, very expensive,” Gary said. “It starts at like $150 a month, and that’s as long as you don’t have any overages.”
During the early days of the Covid pandemic when schools went to online-only NTI, her daughter, Isabelle, had to go to the office at Givens International to have sufficient internet speed to do her online schoolwork, after which she might play some online video games. “The bill ran up to $400 or $500,” Gary said.
Besides, “It’s just so unreliable. (Her husband) Bill will be in the middle of a (customer) quote and then have to stop because the internet’s gone down. There are numerous reboots to our phones. And when it starts having trouble, it’s constant trouble. Like, for a week.”
Such is the online life for many people in rural Henderson County. More than two decades after reliable broadband service became available in the city, many folks out in the county haven’t had access to hard-wired high-speed internet service. Many limp by with cell phones and the little hotspots they can create. Others have had widely varying degrees of success with satellite services or the tower-based system that launched in 2008 as ConnectGRADD and is now operated by Watch Communications.
And some use computers at the Henderson County Public Library if they have serious work to do.
Rural residents here count themselves lucky if they have service fast enough for seamless video conference calls or hours of streaming entertainment at home without buffering, data throttling or service interruptions.
Gary and countless others are grateful that is starting to change.
Her home and business are on the verge of being among the first in Henderson County to be hooked up to rural electric co-op Kenergy Corp.’s new fiber-based broadband service, called Connect, powered by Kenergy.
After entering a partnership with internet service provider Conexon, Kenergy started construction in the fall of 2022, using contractors such as Ervin Cable, MDR, TRC, Vonalas and Conexon to string fiber to utility poles. It connected its first customer, in McLean County, to broadband fiber in February 2023.
Fiber construction began in Henderson County in October 2023, and Kenergy has begun connecting customers here in the Little Dixie, Geneva and Weaverton substation areas.
“As construction progresses in this area, more customers will be eligible for service,” Kenergy said.
It will take a few years to run the 7,200 miles of fiber so all its 57,000 home, farm and business customers in parts of 14 western Kentucky counties. Kenergy indicated that construction should be complete in 2026 or 2027.
But as progress is made, customers will experience internet speeds that they’ve had to come to town to experience.
Residential service will start at $49.95 per month for 100-megabit speed or $79.95 for 1-gigabit (1,000-megabit) unlimited service. Managed WiFi service that includes a mesh router runs $4.95 per month, while the Safe and Secure Package provides parental controls and network security for $3 per month.
2-gig service runs $99.95 per month and includes the WiFi and Safe and Security packages.
Business service ranges from $79.95 (100 Mbps) to $299.95 (2 gig) per month.
Optional landline phone service is also available.
To sign up for Connect service, Kenergy members can visit www.ConexonConnect.com or call 1-844-542-6663.
The broadband project is being financed through a $143.7 million loan from the federal Rural Utilities Service as well as local and state grants, including a $10.2 million grant that Gov. Andy Beshear ceremonially presented here in early March.
Kenergy had for years sought authority to provide broadband service. A change in state law in 2022 finally cleared the way.
“We saw the need for our members and knew we already had the infrastructure in place to bring this project to fruition and meet a vital need for the communities we serve,” Kenergy said in a prepared statement for the Hendersonian.
“The Conexon/Kenergy project is huge progress,” Henderson County Judge-Executive Brad Schneider said.
Meanwhile, faster internet speeds will come to town as Henderson Municipal Power & Light has begun constructing its own gigabit fiber network for home customers.