Newberry Mayor, Foster Senn, Newberry City Manager, Matt DeWitt, and Newberry Utility Director, Tim Baker, presented WCFIBER Board President, Wes McAllister and WCFIBER CEO, Jeff Wilson, with a replica of the Joseph P. Riley Jr. Award, an economic development award Newberry received for its Fiber to the Home project.

“We were struggling as a community with slow internet for years, and then we formed a partnership with WCFIBER that has been fantastic. Getting broadband fiber throughout the City of Newberry has greatly improved the lives of our citizens. When the City of Newberry won a statewide award for the project, we felt the partnership won the award. We decided to make a replica of the award to present to WCFIBER,” said Mayor Senn.

The Joseph P. Riley Jr. Award was created in 2010 and named after the Charleston Mayor. The City of Newberry, along with twenty-seven other cities and towns, submitted entries for this award. With WCFIBER’s help, the City of Newberry became the first municipality in South Carolina to serve all its residents and businesses over a fiber optic network.

Planning for the fiber build-out began in 2018 and was set to be a three-year project but was expedited due to the COVID-19 pandemic. McAllister stated, “This was our first partnership endeavor with a public entity, and this partnership paved the way for so many more. We are changing lives and business by bringing fiber internet to Newberry, which is an investment in their community and their citizens. Our partnership with Newberry has been great for our company, but the connections we made along the way were priceless.”