NextLink IP breaks ground

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  • Manager Paulette Couch accepts the ceremonial shovel for NetLink’s groundbreaking. Staff photo by Taylor Nye
    Manager Paulette Couch accepts the ceremonial shovel for NetLink’s groundbreaking. Staff photo by Taylor Nye
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Technology

A Hudson Oaks, Texas company finds themselves placing a major location in Sulphur Springs as NextLink internet service providers broke ground Tuesday on a new facility at the Heritage business park.

NextLink facilities manager Paulette Couch was on hand to accept the ceremonial silver shovel from the Sulphur Springs Hopkins County Economic Development Corporation.

“We’ve gotten such a warm welcome from everybody, and we are so excited to be working with Sulphur Springs and to use Sulphur Springs as our jumping off point for…our rural broadband expansion,” Couch said.

“This is something we’ve dreamed of for years, that broadband would come to the rural areas,” Hopkins County Judge Robert Newsom said.

In a Tuesday, Aug. 20 session of the city Zoning Board of Adjustments, the board says zoning for the towers the company plans to put up is on their radar as a future item of business, although no plans have been submitted yet.

“One of the greatest things that can happen for economic growth in rural areas…is internet,” Newsom told the News-Telegram. “We’re hoping the opening of this plant will put a fire even more so for rural areas to reach and be able to have good, fast internet. It’s essential to be able to do business across the world.”