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High speed internet access in rural areas

As Morehouse Parish moves forward in terms of economic development, competitive offerings, such as high speed internet access in rural areas, provide the parish with an additional selling point.

NortheastTel of Collinston, which already provides many residents in rural Morehouse Parish with access to high-speed internet, is now offering customers in their service area download speeds that are nearly 12 times the Louisiana average.

A late 2014 report relased by Akami, a cloud services provider, ranked the average Louisiana internet speed as 7.7 megabits per second. NortheastTel can now offer customers service with download speeds of up to 90 megabits per second and upload speeds of 20 megabits per second.

"This offering is a big deal," NortheastTel's Director of Regulatory, Becky Darsey said. "I don't know of anyone else offering 90 meg internet service anywhere. I know in Monroe you can get 50 megs, and that's the highest I know of that a residential account can get for internet."

Internet service speeds at this level allow for streaming without buffering and provide consumers with the opportunity to utilize a variety of services that rely on wifi to work. For example, Darsey and NortheastTel President Mike George related that many agricultural enterprises utilize wifi with leveling equipment and some grain elevators use instruments that utilize a wifi signal to transmit internal temperatures and other measurements. This makes high speed internet offerings an important asset when it comes to economic development.