When it was approved as a non-exclusive cable and internet service provider by Warren Fiscal Court in 2017, few people in Warren County had heard of Lafayette, Tenn.-based North Central Telephone Cooperative.

These days, the company not only has established its name in the county; it is now establishing a physical presence to better serve a growing customer base.

NCTC, which has partnered with Warren Rural Electric Cooperative on rolling out broadband internet service to thousands of southcentral Kentucky residents, has opened an office and warehouse at 176 Porter Pike to better serve those existing customers and others soon to come.

Starting with its original “pilot project” with WRECC to serve some 800 homes in the Boyce community, NCTC has now expanded into several previously underserved areas of Warren and surrounding counties.

The response to that original project, plus some local and federal funding to expedite broadband expansion, created the need for the Porter Pike headquarters.

“That pilot project in the Boyce area has done really well,” said Johnny McClanahan, NCTC president and CEO. “We’ve had a ‘take rate’ of about 70%.”

The NCTC-WRECC partnership only expanded after that original test run, and its growth accelerated when WRECC was awarded a 24-month, $10 million contract by Warren Fiscal Court to extend fiber optic cable and bring high-speed internet service to the final underserved parts of the county.

That contract was complemented by the $2.3 million WRECC was awarded through the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund created to inject billions of dollars into the construction and operation of rural broadband networks.

“Warren RECC has been great to work with over the past three or four years,” McClanahan said. “We’ve reached about 5,000 new customers in Warren, Grayson and Edmonson counties.”

Butch Massey, WRECC’s vice president for engineering and operations, told Warren Fiscal Court in November that the funding has boosted the rollout of fiber.

WRECC has extended cable past homes of 12,500 Warren County members so far, primarily in the eastern and western parts of the county, and had more than 3,200 of them register for NCTC’s service.

Massey said WRECC should have fiber fully installed in Warren County by the end of the year.

“I think it (fiber extension) would’ve happened, but this funding allowed us to greatly reduce the time it took to complete it,” he said.

All the projects, Massey said, are delivering cable that has the potential to provide internet speeds exceeding 1-gigabit.

Until recently, delivery of that fiber optic cable and related equipment has been coordinated out of NCTC’s Tennessee headquarters.

McClanahan said the new facility on Porter Pike will allow NCTC to better serve Warren, Grayson and Edmonson counties and to begin providing service in Butler County as well.

“It will be a good regional office,” he said. “Getting to Grayson County from Lafayette is a long drive. This will save us about half the time.”