Building will soon get started to combine the Washington County cities of Princeton and Cooper into the Downeast Broadband Utility (DBU), the state’s initial municipal-owned broadband utility district. The network is expected to be accomplished future calendar year, according to project officers.
Princeton and Cooper will be the fifth and sixth municipalities to join the Washington County-dependent network, which was founded in 2015 by a joint arrangement among Calais and Baileyville. The DBU emerged when Calais and Baileyville regarded they were being passed up as likely spots for firms owing to a absence of responsible fiber broadband.
The head of the utility stated the communities fashioned the network just after Spectrum and Consolidated Communications did not prolong their expert services to their municipalities.
“We available both of those of those people companies economical enable to make it worthwhile for them to enhance their networks and to support them make a financial gain, and they continue to denied us,” explained Daniel Sullivan, now the DBU president.
The smaller and distribute-out purchaser base frequent to Washington County was not viewed as a suited investment decision, he reported.
Consolidated Communications did not respond to Sullivan but observed it has expanded its service in Maine. Spectrum observed that the company’s predecessor, Time Warner Cable, was servicing the space prior to 2015.
Lighting up the darkish fiber community
The first big action for the DBU was identifying the cost of growing the current darkish fiber community working by way of each municipalities. The community was in position as a outcome of the state’s 3 Ring Binder challenge, a 1,100-mile network of fiber laid in the course of the state’s rural regions that was completed in 2012.
The objective was to expand the dark fiber network — which ran by way of the major streets of both equally Calais and Baileyville — to each family in the communities, giving the opportunity for companies to supply significant-speed internet at no additional network price.
The value was $2.5 million. Construction started in Baileyville and Calais in 2018, and within 24 months each individual house had accessibility to a