ARROWSIC, Maine \u2014 After national companies declined to extend internet service to this small midcoast town, it built its own network. Now one of those giants is moving in.<\/p>\n
The Arrowsic Broadband Authority was formed at a special town meeting in 2020 to manage the system. In March 2024, the first of Arrowsic\u2019s roughly 500 residents got broadband service for the first\u00a0time. It took the town nearly a decade and more than $1 million in federal and private funding.<\/p>\n
This spring, locals started receiving mailers from Fidium, which offers broadband in eight states, offering service at starting rates significantly lower than those offered by the town. Now, local officials are urging residents not to switch to maintain their business model.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a very small network,\u201d Vince Capone, a commissioner on the local broadband authority, said. \u201cWe are literally on the edge of maintaining that network because we have such a small customer base.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fidium\u2019s parent company said competition with the town was not central to its expansion. But it echoes past tension in Maine towns<\/a>\u00a0between incumbent broadband providers and municipality-owned networks.\u00a0An industry group advertised against proposed networks<\/a>\u00a0that were rejected in 2022 by Readfield and Southport voters.<\/p>\n Within weeks, Fidium will offer starting rates of $30 per month to Arrowsic residents, according to the mailers. Those rates will increase after one year of service. A service with similar download speeds from the local authority\u2019s partner, Axiom Technologies costs $49.99, per month. Most of the town \u2014 more than 200 homes and businesses out of roughly 235 \u2014 is signed up.<\/p>\n Eventually, the Arrowsic authority will pay into the town\u2019s budget. But since it is responsible for its own equipment and storm damage repairs, officials are first aiming to put away a few hundred thousand dollars for future maintenance. <\/p>\n Officials estimate that as early as 2029, the authority could pay Arrowsic about $50,000 a year if large numbers of residents don\u2019t switch to Fidium. Losing even 20 percent of its customer base would be a \u201ccritical problem,\u201d Capone said.<\/p>\n The town\u2019s financial risk is limited. It has no debt connected to the broadband project, which was largely funded by the federal American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. However, officials said that if the authority is unable to build its reserves to meet demand for storm repairs, the town could be forced to dip into its own savings or borrow money to keep the network afloat.<\/p>\n Fidium\u2019s arrival has flummoxed\u00a0local officials, partly because its parent company, Consolidated Communications, declined to build broadband infrastructure in Arrowsic years earlier, said Don Hudson, another commissioner.<\/p>\n \u201cIt came as some surprise when all of a sudden we started seeing, essentially, a duplicated system being built on top of ours,\u201d he said. \u201cIf it wasn\u2019t actually happening, it would be laughable.\u201d<\/p>\n Consolidated Communications, Fidium\u2019s parent, owns many of the telephone poles in town. The local group had to pay tens of thousands of dollars to put its cables on them. That ownership has made it simple for Fidium to begin installing its own fiber without any approval from Arrowsic officials.<\/p>\n Machias-based internet service provider Axiom Technologies runs the town\u2019s broadband service. Its CEO, Mark Ouellette, was also surprised to hear of Fidium\u2019s entrance into Arrowsic. His company, which provides internet to several Maine towns, isn\u2019t backing down.<\/p>\n \u201cTypically, when another provider is in the community with fiberoptics, it\u2019s quite a challenging business case to be made to build out fiber on top of fiber already there, especially in small places,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are going to make a strong case that community cyber connectivity is an important asset for the community \u2026 because we return a percentage of our fees to the customer, back to the town.\u201d<\/p>\n The town\u2019s infrastructure is connected to the neighboring city of Bath, where around 9,700 homes and businesses are set to be connected to broadband through Fidium\u2019s ongoing upgrades. Arrowsic\u2019s new infrastructure was\u00a0\u201cspillover,\u201d company spokesperson Kyle Thweatt said. <\/p>\n \u201cProviding more fiber connectivity options in communities benefits everybody in that area,\u201d Thweatt said. <\/p>\n Whether or not locals will switch remains to be seen, but officials in Arrowsic said they were confident residents would see the benefits of local control.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople who live in Arrowsic have a great fondness for Arrowsic,\u201d Hudson said of his neighbors. \u201cAnd they really love this network that we built.\u201d<\/p>\n Daniel O\u2019Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural politics for the Bangor Daily News and the Maine Monitor. Additional support for this reporting is provided by BDN readers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ARROWSIC, Maine \u2014 After national companies declined to extend internet service to this small midcoast town, it built…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[64,63,2711,237,16839,7819,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-15281","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-broadband","11":"tag-internet","12":"tag-rural-broadband","13":"tag-surprise","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}