When Mike Casper crossed the gymnasium stage at River Ridge High School in Illinois’s northwestern corner in May, he had more than coveted scholarships from JCE Co-op to give to graduating seniors. He had a message.

“I said we’re all here because we want you to go out and get an education and come back to our area,” recalls Casper, CEO of the Elizabeth-based co-op. “And I said that’s why we’re building out fiber.”

The applause was loud and long. And it continues to inspire Casper to invest in broadband to improve the quality of life in their rural territory.

Nestled along the upper Mississippi River and surrounded by farms and villages tucked into rolling hills, Galena, with its 200-year-old redbrick edifices, has charm to spare and regularly appears among the top small towns to visit on national tourism lists. Now, with reliable, high-speed internet, Galena is seeing a surge in not only tourism but new residents.

“We have peace of mind working with the co-op,” says Mark Moran, the city administrator. “They’re not profit-oriented like the other providers of internet services are. There’s just a different level of trust.

They’ve proven themselves to be very reliable, dependable and member-oriented—both on electricity and in fiber broadband.”

More than 6,500 of JCE Co-op’s 19,000 members receive the co-op’s broadband service. Within five years, the co-op plans to add 1,500 miles of fiber to its current 1,200 miles and sign up 10,000 to 15,000 more subscribers, many of whom may be new to Galena and new to co-op membership.

“Being able to offer high-speed internet has made Galena even more of an attractive place for relocation from larger cities,” says Moran, who arrived right after college in Iowa 30 years ago and never left.

Most of nearby Whiteside County is not within JCE Co-op’s electric service territory. But the county’s board recently voted to partner with the co-op, allocating $3 million in American Rescue Plan Act grants to fully match the funding JCE Co-op was awarded from Connect Illinois to run fiber to Whiteside’s unserved and underserved areas.

The Galena Territory, a planned community just outside Galena, is another case in point. JCE Co-op completed its buildout to the 6,800-acre development in 2023, ahead of schedule, allowing the homeowners association to add fiber broadband to the list of amenities that includes hiking trails, golf courses, a lake, a marina and an equestrian center.

“Getting fiber throughout the territory was a huge benefit for our members,” says Steve Wyland, the Galena Territory’s general manager. “People want it for the kinds of activities that the fiber can support.”

With “enhanced reliability and lower costs compared to the previous provider,” the co-op’s broadband is helping usher in brisker home sales, longer occupancies and a stronger local economy, he says.

“We’ve had about an 18% increase in full-time residents,” Wyland says, noting that annual home sales have quadrupled to about 300 since 2019.

Houses are selling within a month rather than the customary 90 to 150 days, even with prices climbing 20% or more, he says. Eleven new home starts were approved this year, breaking last year’s record. Owners who rent their properties are also experiencing double-digit demand.

“Everyone wants to be able to work someplace where they can take advantage of the outdoor activities,” says Wyland. “Being able to have that reliable internet, people can work from home.”

During the build, JCE Co-op provided a webpage for property owners to sign up and check their area’s status. “They did a good job of communicating throughout the process, which helped expedite it,” says Wyland.

“And having local member service reps you could actually get on the phone and be able to talk through the process was beneficial.”

JCE Co-op took up broadband in 2009 to connect its advanced metering infrastructure. As fixed wireless systems proved unreliable and intermittent, the co-op in 2016 designated “future-proof” fiber as standard for all broadband buildouts.

“Our vision of the co-op is to enhance the quality of life for our members,” says Jesse Shekleton, JCE Co-op director of broadband operations. “We consider fiber to be the most effective and economic broadband investment for our members to meet the growing demand of telemedicine, distance learning, remote work, emergency services, networking, precision agriculture, IoT, virtual reality and utility smart grid systems.”

Casper says his parents, who recently moved into town, are living proof.

But he says he understands how young people feel. Casper returned to his hometown to lead JCE Co-op after 28 years of forging his career in big cities across the country. He says he wants high schoolers to know the co-op is deploying fiber “because we want you to be able to continue to grow and expand and bring in businesses.”

“One of our objectives is enhancing cooperative value and bringing that value to our members,” Casper says.

Since launching broadband, “our biggest accomplishment is the value that we’ve been able to bring to the communities and building the confidence and trust that our members have in us in accomplishing this.”

‘Very Good to Work With’

Nate Greiner, a virtual reality innovator, says he relocated his global company to Galena with plans for expansion because of the high-speed fiber optic service from his hometown electric cooperative and a level of service national carriers failed to provide elsewhere.

“With JCE Co-op’s broadband, we are going to get 25 times the speed up and down for less than half the cost,” says Greiner. “And we can still compete on a global basis. That’s worth moving back for.”

Greiner grew up in a farming family on the co-op’s power lines before heading to college, then a career at Fortune 500 companies, then launching Design Mill Inc., which creates digital twins of buildings, infrastructure and major facilities that can be analyzed to boost productivity, lower costs and optimize response to critical issues.

DMI’s platform produces 360-degree laser scans of actual facilities with real-time accuracy that clients around the world can experience in three dimensions through VR glasses.

“The biggest thing it needs is a high-speed internet connection,” says Greiner, and JCE Co-op fits the bill with 5 gigabits symmetrical service, which packs 25 times the bandwidth at less than 40% of the cost compared to his previous ISP’s top 200-megabit offering.

“That’s quite a deal, and the folks at JCE Co-op have been very good to work with,” he says, adding that DMI will triple its staff to 20, hiring a mix of local folks and strategic software developers willing to relocate to rural Illinois.

“The whole thing that you have to live on a coast or in a large, populated area to be a player in your industry has changed,” says Greiner. “It doesn’t matter where you live if you can compete in terms of ability—and at less cost. Now we can compete on a global scale from a small town in rural Illinois. That’s pretty cool.”

The relocation of DMI is proving to be mutually beneficial. JCE Co-op recently used DMI’s VR platform to help 10 regional school districts apply for a U.S. Department of Agriculture distance learning grant to promote “classroom- to-career” paths with local employers.

Greiner is also working with JCE Co-op to develop an innovative learning project to benefit future generations by giving high school students training through VR to be a broadband technician.

Overall, Greiner says he is enjoying his return to Galena and his work with JCE Co-op.

“With JCE Co-op, you get that feeling that they are there to help rather than extract commerce from you,” Greiner says. “It’s a welcoming feeling. That’s really the crux of it.”

‘JCE Co-op Fiber Changed Everything’

Jim Baranski and his wife, Beth, launched BHMS, their architecture firm specializing in historic and custom design, in Galena 35 years ago when they fell in love with the immaculately preserved town two hours from their native Chicago. Their business’s survival depended on technology.

“JCE Co-op Fiber came and changed everything,” says Jim Baranski, a former user of DSL and “very, very expensive” cable internet. “It’s a lot faster and way more affordable to the point that I don’t think about it anymore. It’s one less thing for me to worry about as a business owner, and there’s a lot of value in that.”

Reliability, speed and bandwidth lets BHMS compete for contracts across the country and provide clients its multidimensional virtual design experience, he says.

“Our goal is to do the best work we can for our clients,” says Baranski. “Having the right technology allows us to do that.”

JCE Co-op broadband has let the small firm employ highly skilled architects remotely and rehire two who had relocated during the pandemic. With reliable, 1-gigabit-symmetrical service, the 14 employees work together in real time on the many complex phases of a project without a glitch, says Baranski, who lives next door to the office where all the design work is done.

Connecting with consultants nationwide is also seamless and more cost-effective than before, he says.

“Right now, we have projects all over the country and people all over the country. Because of the stability of the fiber, it works quite well.”

The firm has tackled big-budget projects nationwide, including the Loyola University law school, state-of-the-art office towers in Chicago, Texas Roadhouse restaurants and high-end private homes. The Galena City Hall renovation, ballparks and music and theater space are among the local projects.

The firm is also working with a nonprofit on a $38 million project to transform long-vacant neo-Georgian buildings on the historic Shimer College campus into affordable housing for the little town of Mount Carroll, which is in JCE Co-op’s electric territory.

BHMS’s model may be unusual among architecture firms, Baranski notes, but it “will become more popular as time goes on. When people want to live in more rural places, broadband fiber allows us to do jobs we want to do and compete.”

“We are able to grow where we are—to do the work we want to do with the quality we want—because of fiber,” he says.

‘Definitely Made a Difference’

Tracy Bauer, the first Galena native to be president and CEO of Midwest Medical Center, recently hired three specialists and is overseeing a $35 million addition to the hospital, which records about 19,000 patient visits and more than 360 surgeries annually.

“We would never have guessed in 2007, when we built the hospital, that we would be out of space in 2024,” she says. It reflects not just a growth in Galena’s population but “more attention to the medical services we can provide.”

Midwest Medical’s monthly earnings now equal its total revenue for the year it opened.

“That shows incredible growth,” says Bauer, who began in accounting before taking the hospital’s helm in 2011. “You can’t do that without having a reliable option for the internet.”

The Illinois Critical Access Hospital network initially provided fiber, but “we didn’t have reliable redundancy,” says Bauer. For medical records and transactions, “reliability is really key. JCE Co-op wanted to get there as soon as possible. They made it happen.”

Having fast, reliable internet also helped attract sought-after doctors and staff to meet the thriving community’s needs, she says. A neurologist relocated from Chicago to Midwest Medical Center in August, and a gynecologist and weight loss specialist arrives in September.

A rheumatologist even returned to the United States from Pakistan to join the hospital in July.

“He had a lot of opportunities, and he chose Galena for where he wanted to practice,” Bauer says.

JCE Co-op’s broadband also serves the patient population that is increasingly going online for lab results, radiology reports and doctor visits through an online portal and tapping into telemedicine mental health services offered by the hospital, she says.

“The quality of life drastically has improved in Jo Daviess County with broadband for people to access their records and their physicians and to get quality care without having to travel outside Jo Daviess County—especially seniors who may not have transportation,” says Bauer. “Patients don’t tend to get specialized care if it is not local.”

The dynamic progression of her hometown is “a reflection of the cooperative serving a huge need we didn’t know we had,” she says. “It has definitely made a difference.”

That includes her family. Her oldest son is a JCE Co-op lineworker apprentice after a stint as a broadband technician.

“He has a great career, and he’s been able to stay local,” she says.

She is eager for JCE Co-op fiber to reach her rural home, where her two younger sons often leave her without bandwidth.

“Once JCE Co-op fiber is hooked up, I’ll be able to do more work at home in the evenings,” she says. “It will improve my quality of life. Instead of losing sleep, I’ll be able to get work done.”

‘I’m Able to Work Smarter’

When it comes to a better quality of life through broadband, “the sky is the limit,” says Jerry Brearton, food safety chief at Neumiller Farms in Thomson, Illinois.

The family-run business of six potato farms in the state’s rural northwest corner is reaping benefits since the co-op delivered high-speed internet seven years ago.

Brearton ticks off efficiencies brought by the co-op’s broadband service, including smart technology to check the temperature and humidity of storage units and improved security and communications with workers. Smart technology can track truck weights at multiple locations, keep their clocks operational, message board staff and enable precision agriculture for irrigation.

“We still put in eight hours—there’s no shortage of work—but I’m able to work smarter 40% of the time with broadband rather than a clipboard and driving around,” he says.

Rather than send employees by truck to check facilities for proper storage data, “we do it all on the phone. Now one guy can do it even in January from Key West when he’s on vacation,” says Brearton.

“We work smarter. The sky is the limit with broadband on new equipment and services and technology.”

Before JCE Co-op built fiber out to the farm, inconsistent satellite internet and an $18,000 server crippled file sharing and limited any tech advancement, Brearton says.

“Now we store all our files in the cloud.”

Fiber has also proved reliable for farm security. “With the broadband you can set security cameras up to only record when there’s activity and adjust the location to be more precise so what is recorded is not just some raccoons,” he says.

Brearton says the co-op’s broadband frees him to pursue new projects, like displaying company updates, safety notices, reminders and even mark birthdays and kids’ graduations or other accomplishments on TV monitors in breakrooms.

The farm also recently built its temporary workers five two-bedroom apartments served by JCE Co-op fiber broadband.

“It keeps people connected,” he says. “That’s important to the Neumiller family. We consider ourselves family. We are on our third generation of workers at the farm.”

Brearton, who is retired Navy, tests JCE Co-op fiber on the farm and finds the speed averages 425 megabits per second up and down.

“Not only is it fast, it’s reliable,” he says. “I deal with a lot of vendors at the farms. You get the runaround. I call JCE Co-op, they recognize your number or your voice, and the same four or five guys or gals help you out.”

The Confidence to Stay

Thirty miles southeast of Galena, a village of 1,800 lies outside JCE Co-op’s electric territory but is fully covered by its fiber broadband after residents rallied for its internet service.

“What does JCE Co-op broadband mean for this corner of the world’s quality of life? It allows for us locals to be confident and stay here knowing that we are not behind the times, and it attracts new people knowing they can have that quality of life they want,” says Sam VenHuizen, a loan officer at Citizens State Bank in Stockton, Illinois.

“People feel more comfortable and encouraged to move their primary home or business here, because we have more reliable internet now. There’s no way around it.”

VenHuizen, 27, helped lead the charge for JCE Co-op broadband to come to his hometown. As a member of Stockton’s Chamber of Commerce, he and others deployed a community outreach plan, dividing the village into five sections and assigning “fiber champions.”

“We had a really strong group of volunteers on our chamber board that took flyers door-to-door and sponsored learning events with JCE Co-op to educate members of the community on fiber,” he says.

Within two years, Stockton garnered enough commitments to justify JCE Co-op building out its fiber network. By 2023, 100% of the village had access.

“JCE Co-op was able to move us to construction and implementation faster than we expected,” VenHuizen says. “There was plenty of need in existing businesses and homes, and now new businesses are coming in. If we hadn’t taken steps a few years go to get to that point, it would be harder to attract families and businesses here now.”

The key driver for gaining critical mass?

“Pain points,” says VenHuizen. “Most business owners hadn’t had any experience with fiber, but the current options were giving us headaches. We talked a lot about JCE Co-op’s longevity and how this is a solution for the long term.

“Too often our internet went out and speed was inconsistent. We had options from bigger players and maybe one small company promised fast enough speeds, but because of the way their system or towers worked, the speeds were not there. It’s been the opposite of that with JCE Co-op in getting what we pay for.”

At the bank, communications between the branches and their customers are more efficient with video conferencing and speedier email transactions, he says. “We’re not running around quite as much.”

VenHuizen says his wife has enough bandwidth to work from home, and they bought a property in Galena, where renters can work remotely or stream.

“It’s been a big positive knowing that JCE Co-op had installed fiber at the home.”

JCE Co-op continues to uplift Stockton’s quality of life, he adds.

“I can’t think of an instance where we asked JCE Co-op for support and they weren’t there to sponsor an event or to be there,” he says. “Being from a small town, people have a huge appreciation for those who want to give back to the community.”