Carbondale will soon be one of the few communities in Illinois with high-speed Gigabit Internet service.

Gov. Pat Quinn announced Aug. 23 that Carbondale was a winner of a grant through the Illinois Gigabit Communities Challenge, part of the Illinois Jobs Now development program.

The application for the project was submitted by a partnership between the city, Frontier Communications, Southern Illinois University and Connect SI. The upgrade will make Carbondale one of the few communities in the country with Internet 100 times faster than what is currently available.

The contest awarded Frontier Communications, the company constructing the project, with $1.5 million in state aid through grant money. City Manager Kevin Baity said the town incurs next to no cost in the project.

“The cost to the city is actually nothing as far as actual dollars,” he said. “We might have to process permits (for the construction), but as far as hard dollars, the city is not putting in any hard cash.”

The project will run from University Mall on Illinois Rt. 13 to the east side of town. A leg will run south on U.S. Route 51 to the SIU campus and calls for at least 1,000 end users. The university now has around 3 gigabits of Internet service but the project will increase the speeds by nearly one-third.

The project’s goal is to create and attract jobs to southern Illinois via technology advancement. According to David Blanchette, a spokesman for Pat Quinn, the project will create jobs.

“(The jobs) will come from the actual construction of the network, but it will also attract businesses who need to be served by this ultra high-speed Internet,” he said.

According to Eric Shadley, general manager of Frontier Communications for southern Illinois, the project should immediately create up to six new jobs during construction. Businesses in the city will be able to upgrade their websites with higher resolution graphics and expanded service.

Kathy Lively, executive director of the Connect SI Foundation, said new industries will be attracted to the area by the gigabit service.

“When you talk about high speed broadband, you’re talking about the knowledge-based economy,” she said. “People are going to be able to do their jobs more quickly and more efficiently. Research can now occur that couldn’t occur before … this is a very significant investment in our region and in our future.”

There is no immediate timetable for the project. An announcement is expected later this week.