BETHEL  — Sullivan County and Archtop Fiber celebrated the launch of the $29.9 million ConnectALL-funded broadband project with a press conference on Thursday, June 12, at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts. The project, made possible by the collaborative efforts of Sullivan County, Archtop Fiber, and Empire State Development, will provide 22,000 addresses in the county with high-speed Internet service by the end of 2026. 

Archtop Fiber announced last month that it secured almost $200 million in funding to expand throughout rural areas in the Northeast. They will be actively adding local jobs for both the development stage and ongoing customer service thereafter.

“I want to thank the leadership of Sullivan County, and we’ve been working with them for a long time to make this a reality,” Archtop Fiber Co-Founder Diane Quennoz said.

Quennoz praised Sullivan County Legislature Chair Nadia Rajsz and County Manager Joshua Potosek for being especially instrumental in the formation of the project, which will provide multi-gig, all-fiber Internet and phone service to Sullivan County’s underserved rural communities.

Rajsz gave a shoutout to Bethel Woods and Cablevision founder Alan Gerry, saying, “I do want to thank Alan for everything he’s done for the county. He is a true visionary and a legend… and a strong thread that connects his amazing accomplishments to why we’re standing here today. More than half a century ago, he foresaw the promise and potential in stringing cable around Sullivan County to provide crystal clear TV signals to our mountainous region. He brought the world to people who couldn’t even get a signal.” 

Rajzs noted that decades later, our region faces a similar challenge with accessing high-speed internet: “many spots throughout Sullivan County are not served by anything broadband, there’s no internet service in the majority of the county.” Rajsz mentioned the vision for widespread broadband throughout the county was first conceived by Commissioner of Information Technology Services (ITS) Lorne Greene.

Greene said, “Rumi, the 13th century poet and scholar said ‘As you start to walk on the right, the way appears.’ What is the significance of this thought here today? The significance is that clarity doesn’t come before action, it comes from action…. We took action to write a new chapter in Sullivan County’s history...The vision of the tomorrow we bring as a result of high-speed fixed wireless in homes and businesses of this county we call home is transformational.” 

Greene said the project will spur economic development in local businesses, enhance farmers’ access to real-time weather and market analytics, establish online learning resources for students, expand online healthcare capabilities for remote residents, and improve communication infrastructure for emergency medical services. 

The celebration ended with a ceremonial breaking of ground where Legislators and officials associated with the project picked up a shovel and dug into the dirt, a foreshadowing of the construction that will take place over the next year as Archtop Fiber installs a new communication tower and more than 253 miles of fiber throughout the rural conduits of Sullivan County, once again bringing the world to communities without a signal.