Charter Communications’s Spectrum cable business on Wednesday committed to investing $1.25 billion in Ohio to boost the speed of its internet service.
The work underway in Ohio is part of Spectrum’s larger project to upgrade its network to support multi-gigabit speeds and meet the ever-increasing demand for faster internet service. The overall project is set to wrap up by mid-2026, a six-month delay from the original projected completion date.
The cable company plans to allocate $500 million to a “network evolution” project. The work will enable internet connections with equal upload and download speeds as well as multi-gigabit internet speeds of 25, 50, or 100 Gbps, according to Spectrum.
Spectrum plans to put another $750 million towards expanding underserved rural areas. This portion of the project aims to bring gigabit broadband to almost 140,000 homes and small businesses in over 60 Ohio counties.
“We value the investments that Spectrum is making to help us achieve the goal of bridging the digital divide,” Lt. Gov. Jon Husted said in a statement.
Spectrum said work has already begun on the network evolution project in Southwest Ohio and the Cincinnati area and most of the project should be completed by 2025. As of this past June, the rural broadband expansion initiative has brought broadband to Ohio counties like Tuscarawas, Vinton, Muskingum, and Clinton.
“Through this multi-year investment in our network, we will ensure that customers across our entire Ohio service area will receive even faster broadband speeds, with the network security and reliability they have come to reply upon,” Adam Falk, Charter’s senior vice president of state government affairs, said in a statement.