Pine Belt Communications is excited to announce that it has completed a long overdue upgrade to its internet service in Grove Hill and Whatley and is now capable of delivering 200/30 Megabits per second download/upload speeds across the service area.
Lisa Ray and Robin Creighton, the company’s local management team, are truly looking forward to the improved service levels that customers will experience from the faster speed. In addition to the individual top-end speeds that can be provided, overall system capacity constraints are being eliminated with the new equipment that has recently been purchased and installed. This will provide for more consistent, across-the-board performance throughout each day, especially during the peak demand periods in the evenings when most customers are using their Pine Belt TV service and other streaming video applications including gaming.
“Pine Belt Communications has been serving parts of central Alabama since 1958. Over the last several years we have been working to expand our core footprint of Arlington, Dixons Mills, Sweet Water, & Nanafalia,” said John Nettles, Pine Belt’s president. Pine Belt first started offering services in Grove Hill and also Butler about 10 years ago after taking ownership of the cable TV system there. Nettles went on to say that they have tried hard to make incremental improvements as time has passed but admitted that it has been a little more challenging than initially anticipated. “As it turned out, most of the equipment we purchased in 2012 was old and outdated then, and today’s upgrade represents a major step in what has been an ongoing effort to move the system into the current technology realm. Adding to the challenges faced in Grove Hill is the reality that, unlike Butler, the system is not contiguous with any of our other facilities, and therefore we are dependent on other companies to connect it to our other service areas. Couple all that with the hurricanes, tornadoes, and lightning storms that seem to like us a lot, well, let’s just say it keeps us hopping. I am glad to say, as well, that the upgrades completed today are just the first in a series of planned investments that will soon put Grove Hill, Butler and several other long neglected areas of west Alabama at the front of the line when it comes to internet access. As announced last month, in addition to the upgrades described here, Pine Belt will soon be starting on a total rebuild of its distribution networks in Grove Hill and Whatley as well as new construction in several other areas in Clarke, Choctaw, Marengo, Hale, Perry, Dallas, & Wilcox Counties which will allow us to offer fiber optic services to every home and business passed. Likewise, we will also be constructing a route to directly connect Grove Hill to the facilities we operate in Marengo and Wilcox Counties, thereby eliminating that vulnerable dependency,” Nettles went on to say.
Pine Belt’s Grove Hill operation is a member of the family of wired and wireless telephone, streaming television, and mobile and fixed wireless broadband internet services the company provides in Choctaw, Clarke, Dallas, Marengo, Perry, and Wilcox counties. Pine Belt’s mission is the same today as it was in 1958 when the company was founded by the late Dr. James Nettles and his widow, Rose Mary S. Nettles – to provide the highest quality, most modern services at fair and affordable rates and to support the communities served.