Shawnee Communications is proud to serve communities throughout Southern Illinois, providing telephone and Internet connectivity to thousands of families and businesses. With a history of bringing modern communications technology to our communities, Shawnee Communications is a home-town company with a wide-world perspective to share with our customers.
On July 2nd 2010, it was announced that Shawnee Telephone was awarded $7.35 million in grants and loans from the federal government and $1 million in state matching funds for its “Southern Illinois Sustainable Broadband Transformation” project, putting 91 people to work and building a sustainable broadband network to support additional economic development in southern Illinois. The federal award, announced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utility Service and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications Information Administration, is one of 66 funded nationwide, for a total of $7.2 billion. The state matching funds come through the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity. As part of the project, Shawnee hopes to connect by fiber three local school systems and a local community college so that the schools can cost-effectively expand their curricula to add college preparatory classes. The project will be substantially completed within the next 24 months, with build-out beginning by this September. Additionally, Shawnee Telephone will be able to build out its broadband network and significantly increase the speed of the network. In total, the proposed broadband expansion will serve 1,209 households, 438 businesses, and 35 public schools, libraries, law enforcement offices and medical care facilities in Cave in Rock, Elizabethtown, Rosiclare, Golconda, Eddyville and Gallatin County.
