Welcome To The Web Home of the City of Highland Fiber Initiative Committee (FIC)
"connectHighland"
The connectHighland Fiber To The Home and/or Business initiative IS NOT a tax supported initiative. If approved by the Council to be on the ballot in April, the referendum WILL NOT be a tax referendum vote. It will be a referendum vote that will let the citizens decide to approve or disapprove the continuation of the initiative. This utility will be a self supporting utility that will operate the same as all current utilities within the City. Again, this IS NOT a tax referendum.
Please join us "On The Square" on September 29th at 6:00pm for a "connectHighland" Technology Fair. You will have the opportunity to see and experience what the committee has been working on. Displays of the proposed techologies will be set up for you to see and ask questions about. Please join us for a great evening. There might even be a movie for the kids!!
This is the place where you will find news, information, and facts about the Fiber Initiative Committee now known as "Connect Highland". The "Connect Highland" slogan will parallel other fiber initiatives within Illinois including "Connect Southern Illinois" and "Connect Illinois".
There are three "Connect Highland" sub-committees including: Finance, Marketing, and Technology. Even though the three sub-committees are working independently of each other, they are also working together to provide you (the citizen) with a business plan that will be presented to the City Council in the Fall of this year. The business plan will propose an alternative City of Highland utility when you need to choose voice, video, and data (internet, etc.) for your home and/or business in or around the City of Highland. Two consultants, Scott Bowles of Spectrum Engineering and Kim Harber of KLH Consulting, LLC, have been hired to assist in these efforts.
Fiber can possibly provide internet speeds up to 100 times faster than your current provider and will provide pristine television signals, and an incredible telephone service, and other services yet to be discovered. Besides all of that this project will affect many sectors of life within Highland and the Highland area. Health care services, business and industry, education and training, government, and agriculture, just to mention a few, can benefit from greater accessibility and visibility through a successful "Connect Highland" project. Fiber broadband internet services can mean more profitability for those who wisely use the increased speeds to their advantage. And finally, imagine all of your utilities on one bill. Incredible!!
The ultimate goal of the "Connect Highland" committee is to educate the public and the Highland City Council about the possible installation of fiber to the home (FTTH) and/or fiber to the businesses of our great community.
Please take time to browse the site. If you would like to be a member of the committee, please click on the "Want To Be On The Committee?" link to the left. Should you have questions, email addresses, etc. are posted on the "Contact Us" link also on the left. ________________________________________________________________
We now have a new downloadable "Connect Highland" brochure that might answer your unanswered questions. It is a 2 sided .pdf document that is about 1.2MB in size. Click here for the new brochure and click here if you need to install the Acrobat Reader to view it (if necessary.) Enjoy!!
