CLINTON — Internet service provider Star Communications is working to establish 30 drive-up WiFi hotspots at various schools and other public locations in Sampson and Bladen counties.
The move will help facilitate learning for students forced away from their classrooms and a public in need of connectivity during the coronavirus outbreak.
“We felt that was the way to reach the most people immediately,” said Jeff Nethercutt, Star’s general manager and executive vice president.
He said his staff, the school districts and government officials have been working on the project. Sampson has a county school district, Clinton has a city district and Bladen has a county district. Network logistics and security firewalls are part of the process.
“We have been working hard behind the scenes on this for the better part of a week now,” Nethercutt said.
Implementing those hotspots is ongoing, and some additional equipment was ordered to meet the endeavor. Star has been in close contact with school systems to gauge their ideal locations, while working to see how they can accommodate that on their end based on the location of Star’s existing network.
Nethercutt said some of those sites should be operational “in the next week to 10 days.” The hope is to have all of them up in the next two weeks. The sites, which could also include local libraries, will be made public and will be in safe places. For some of the more rural areas, Star has been in contact with churches as potential locations, to get their permission.
It has been a community effort and that community has been very supportive, Nethercutt noted. The initial focus is the designated school locations.
“Naturally, it is for the schools kids that are out of school because of this, so they can do their schoolwork that has to be done online; but we will have some sites open for public use as well for those who don’t have access to connectivity in their homes,” he said. “It kind of gets us, as a cooperative, back to our roots in serving the unserved.”
Star Communications representatives were on a conference call with Gov. Roy Cooper, state Department of Information Technology Secretary Tracy Doaks and others for about 45 minutes Friday. Star was one of about 90 internet providers from across the state on the call to discuss the state’s response to COVID-19 and connectivity needs facing students, teachers and employees.
“The governor was reassuring all of us that the state was doing everything in their power to combat this COVID-19 pandemic and they were putting the full resources of the state behind that,” Nethercutt said. “They were thanking us for what we were doing in keeping the citizens connected.”
Star’s service territory covers 1,458 square miles in five counties, the bulk of which is in Sampson and Bladen. The WiFi hotspots will be fairly evenly distributed between the those two, Nethercutt said.
As far as the ones on school property, those may only be available to the students at that school through a password. However, there will be several others managed on Star’s network that will be available to the public.