News

For the last several years, Hamilton County Telephone Co-op has been working diligently to serve the underserved in our region of Southern Illinois with high speed internet service. We made it our mission five years ago to expand our network, through our subsidiary Futiva, into five neighboring counties of Franklin, Jefferson, Saline, White, and Williamson. Although many that live within the main towns in these counties have options, many of those living outside city limits or on the border of the towns do not have options when it comes to high speed internet. Today we are very excited and humbled to announce that with the USDA’s grant and loan program, we will be able to serve just under 8,000 locations in portions of the rural areas of Franklin, Saline, White, and Williamson counties in the coming years. Some of these areas include Lake Benton area, Orient, Whiteash, Spillertown, Pittsburg, Paulton, Crab Orchard, Harco, Ledford, Pankeyville, Muddy, Wasson, Raleigh, Brownsville, Colony West, as well as many other rural unnamed areas. These areas were all determined and qualified as underserved, meaning that at least 90% of the locations in these areas do not have access to 10/1 internet service. This multi-year project will allow us to serve our region with services that they might not otherwise ever have access to. Once this project is completed, it will give us close proximity to many other underserved areas within these five counties. We look forward to bringing fast and affordable high speed internet to this serving area and growing our network for the forseeable future.

For additional information on this award, visit: USDA Invests $46.4 Million in High-Speed Broadband in Rural Illinois

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Do you own a Roku Smart TV or older version Roku Stick? Have you been seeing issues lately when trying to stream your favorite shows or movies? According to the newest update, your Roku TV or Roku 3 Stick could be causing its own issues. Roku has added a feature called “Device Connect” on TV’s which broadcasts a constant WPS signal. This causes Wi-Fi interference resulting in lower signals not only for your TV, but all other wireless devices as well. On Roku 3 Sticks, the Roku will grab the same Wi-Fi channel as the nearest Wi-Fi access point (e.g. yours).  It will broadcast a Wi-Fi Direct SSID DIRECT-roku-123-A2 or “Hidden” on the same channel.  It will increase its power to stay above your access point if you up the transit power. The Roku has interference mitigation enabled by default.  This is technology which deliberately disrupts traffic to nearby Access Points to attempt to improve local traffic. Check out the link  below for instructions on how to turn off and disable these features.

Roku – Instructions on disabling “Device Connect” features.

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Visit us on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/hamiltoncountycommunications/  for up to date information on Hamilton County Communications.

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Click the following links to view recent issues of Co-op Connection, the official newsletter of Hamilton County Telephone Co-op: