Thursday, February 9, 2017

New Gigabit Overbuilder Will Use Anchor Institution Strategy

Building a consumer internet access business using anchor institutions is not a new idea. In rural areas, it often makes sense to connect anchor institutions (schools, government offices, hospitals) with optical backhaul, and then extend the network to small businesses and consumer locations from there.

The same approach has been advocated by some would-be gigabit access providers, with mixed success, so far. The approach is to build more-limited optical backbones linking key institutions or anchor tenants, and then build out locally to small businesses and consumers once that is done.

To some extent, that strategy is related to the “fiberhood” build strategy popularized by Google, and now used by many gigabit access providers.

Angie Communications is the latest firm to try and make the anchor institution strategy work. Angie wants to build 10-gigabit fixed connections in 87 markets where the company has access to almost 10,000 on-net buildings.

Angie also says it will use fixed wireless to provide gigabit service to “off-net buildings and locations.”

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