By Fred Guarino

The Selma Times-Journal

 

Trillion Communications Corporation submitted a corrective action plan for the South Central Alabama Broadband Project to the federal government Friday.

“We were successful in submitting the grant … it’s called the corrective action plan today,” Trillion Communications Corporation CEO Ralph E. Brown said. “It is our plan of action to accelerate the construction activity for the grant.”

The $86 million, three-year South Central Alabama Broadband Project has been on hold for 30 days for evaluation by the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Dr. Aaron McCall, executive program manager for the South Central Alabama Broadband Commission, said Trillion Communications was given until March 9 to show the project to lay 2,200 miles of fiber optic cable infrastructure for high speed content and communications can be delivered on time.

Trillion Communications is the grant recipient for the project funded by $59 million in National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) grant funds and $27 million from private investors.

The project is designed to provide fiber optic cable infrastructure in Butler, Crenshaw, Conecuh, Dallas, Escambia, Lowndes, Macon and Wilcox counties.

McCall said the project was “under agency review because we are behind schedule.”

He said in August of this year, 67 percent of the project is supposed to be done. He said this is a 36-month shovel ready project, which is supposed to be up and running by Aug. 13, 2013.

However, at the time the project was put on hold, McCall said, less than 1 percent of the work had been done, including 29 miles of cable in Crenshaw County, laid by Troy Cable, and 20 miles of conduit in Lowndes County, laid by A2D.