The NH Electric Cooperative board in a special session on Monday approved extending high-speed internet service to nearly 17,000 of its members in 32 Grafton County towns, from Bristol up to Littleton and the Connecticut River to Campton.

“This decision is the most significant commitment so far in the Co-op’s path-breaking entry into broadband,” said Richard Knox of New Hampshire Broadband Advocates, a grassroots group that first urged the nonprofit utility to extend high-speed internet service to its members in 2020. “It signifies that NHEC means business when it says it wants to provide this essential service to rural towns overlooked by other internet providers.”

Over the past two years, NHEC has confined its broadband projects to only four towns – Lempster, Colebrook, Sandwich and Acworth – potentially serving 2,800 of its electricity customers. The Sandwich and Acworth networks are expected to be operational this spring.

In contrast, the newly approved Grafton County project will reach more than a third of the Co-op’s 118-town service area. The Grafton County build-out is expected to take 12 to 18 months.

“This really gets us in the game. It’s really a completely different order of magnitude,” said Leo Dwyer of Sandwich, an NHEC board member who has spearheaded the broadband project. “And when we get to the end of this, it will continue. We’re looking at a series of authorizations over the next two years, say, that will get broadband to all our members.” The member-owned utility serves 85,000 New Hampshire residents and businesses.

“What this means is that we’re in this for the long haul,” added Bill Darcy of Benton, another NHEC board member who has pushed for adding broadband to the company’s mission.

NHEC declined to put a price tag on the Grafton County project, but at the widely cited rule-of-thumb of about $30,000 per mile of installed fiber, it’s expected to cost at least $30 million.

The proposal won the support of eight out of NHEC’s 11 board members. Two were opposed and one abstained.

“I can’t support a plan that fails to address the needs of our members,” board member Carolyn Kedersha said. “The financial model fails to account for necessary resources to run this in a sustainable fashion.” Doubts were also raised by Daniel Senie, who voted no, and Tom Mongeon, who abstained.

But the majority dismissed these doubts. “We have a program that will be tremendously helpful to our membership,” said board member Ed French. “We’ve always kept in the forefront of our mind that the electric distribution business cannot be harmed. I think we have a program that will move us forward in that light.”

The resolution approved by the board notes that the Grafton County project is actually smaller in scope than the territory covered by a $6.5 million grant from the Federal Communications Commission last year to bring broadband to 70 census-tract blocks the FCC considers unserved. The Co-op’s successful bid was deemed financially feasible by its board when it was submitted.

“NHEC’s updated financial models and project analysis demonstrate that providing fiber internet service to members produces better financial results than the 2020 ‘bidding model’ upon which the RDOF bids were based and that meet all Board financial criteria,” Monday’s resolution pointed out.

This is largely due to the influx of new federal money for rural broadband expansion — $7 billion in the American Rescue Plan Act passed last year and $65 billion in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, enacted last November. The Sununu Administration is currently deciding how to allocate $121 million coming to New Hampshire under the American Rescue Plan Act.

“We’re making this commitment” to provide fiber-optic broadband to Grafton County “in what we see is a changed environment for grants,” Dwyer said. “The state wants to get people served as soon as possible and we may be their best path to do it.”

Dwyer said the Co-op’s broadband service will cost about $50 a month for 100 megabits-per-second (both download and up) and $90 per month for gigabit service. The Co-op is considering a 2 Gbps option for not much more. He said that the Co-op will take advantage of a new federal program that will provide a $30 monthly subsidy for broadband customers with incomes less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level – that is, $55,500 for a family of four – and for recipients of other programs such as SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) and free lunch for schoolchildren.

The timing of the Grafton County project may be propitious for the town of Wentworth, which will consider a proposal at its March 12 town meeting to float a $1.5 million bond issue to subsidize a fiber-optic network in partnership with Consolidated Communications – a business model pioneered by Chesterfield and other towns.

NHEC’s decision to string fiber in Wentworth and dozens of other Grafton County towns, without asking for any money from the towns, may preempt that bond issue.

“I think it will make a huge difference in Wentworth,” said local resident Bernice Sullilvan. “I hope the bond issue will get voted down. If the Co-op is coming through, it will be just as quick, if not quicker, than CCI. So there’s no reason to do a bond.”

Grafton County towns in line to get broadband service from the Co-op, are Ashland, Benton, Bath, Bridgewater, Bristol, Campton, Canaan, Dorchester, Easton, Ellsworth, Grafton, Groton, Hanover, Haverhill, Hebron, Holderness, Landaff, Littleton, Lisbon, Lyman, Lyme, Monroe, Orange, Orford, Piermont, Plymouth, Rumney, Sugar Hill, Thornton, Warren, Wentworth and Woodstock.