(upbeat music)
- Dear Mr. Rutledge, my neighbors and I
are in need of broadband services from Charter.
After striking out with Verizon and satellite providers,
I decided I'm just gonna write some letters.
I wrote three letters,
mailed them off the old fashioned way with a stamp.
All other areas of our town are covered
except for this one, where we live,
disconnected the office called
and said, "Hey, your letters made it.
We have your plan.
We have your build-out, be patient it's coming."
We're going to build out.
Well this pole here is one of the poles
in this network that goes out to my home,
as well as three of my neighbors.
Charter ran cable here
and we're thankful to have it.
One day I was coming home from the store,
and I saw the reels of cable and that was a good day.
That was a really good day.
(machine whirring)
(upbeat music)
- I'm a fire splicer.
And for the Hudson Valley, we're doing
helping out with the New York state build-out.
Myself and my colleague, Eric,
we actually do all the fiber optic work
and we'll splice the fiber and then verify levels.
Making sure everything will be activated to
help everybody build out.
- Big focus is getting internet service, phone, TV
into rural areas that otherwise probably never
would have seen it.
- This helps out a lot of people
especially with the COVID and everything going on.
It makes it nicer to know
that people are getting the internet to
do the things they need to do from home.
You know work, school.
- There's a lot of work involved.
The permitting process can take anywhere
from 12 to 18 months.
The whole process is very involved.
- Here's a typical New York state DOT work permit.
It shows the area that we request to do our work in.
These project maps on the walls
give us a guidance of progress and what's happening.
This map here represents area
that we're extending plant into.
So all the red here, you see, this is
all the work that has to take place to activate here.
(upbeat music)
- We're currently building, expanding our network
to one of our rural communities,
The city of Justin, Texas.
Our expansion has benefited homeowners
as well as the businesses by providing them better,
reliable internet connection that they've been lacking.
- There's going to be more demand for higher speeds.
Our customers are wanting more and more
and we have the bandwidth here to provide that.
(upbeat music)
- [Kandice} I have been waiting for Charter to come
into our town for years.
The moment I found out through the Chamber of Commerce,
that they were laying the lines,
I was absolutely thrilled because in Springtown,
we've only ever had your basic slow internet.
It was just never up to par for what we needed it for.
We rely on the internet for everything:
printing our shipping labels, buying our postage.
We do everything over the internet in our online sales.
I think it's absolutely amazing
that Charter is investing in rural America.
It is only going to help everyone in those communities.
- As we would go through these neighborhoods
just starting this project,
homeowners would come out telling me how happy they were.
We felt like rock stars in a way, we really did.
- It's definitely a good feeling, getting people service
and people are glad to see you in town.
So it's, it's always a good feeling.
- I'm grateful, you know, to live here,
in a great place and modern amenities.
It's, it's great.
(upbeat music)