In early 2023, Dryden, New York, formally launched the town’s municipal broadband network, becoming the first municipality in the state to provide residents with direct access to affordable, publicly owned fiber.
A year and a half later, and the town of 14,500 says they’ve just signed up their 400th subscriber and continue to make steady progress expanding the popular network into rural enclaves in and around Dryden long deemed “unprofitable” by regional telecom monopolies.
Dryden Fiber Executive Director David Makar tells Ithaca-based local news outlet 607 News Now that the first year and a half of operations focused on building the core fiber ring around the city.
They’ve since shifted to the time-consuming task of extending last mile fiber access out to rural unserved and underserved homes in Dryden and nearby Caroline (population 3,321).
“There’s about 500 households between Dryden and Caroline that if they want to get online – it’s dial up modems, like it’s the year 2000,” Makar says. “Since we are very rural…there’s no easy way to get a lot of these houses,” he notes, indicating that the logistics and permissions for rural pole attachments have been unsurprisingly time consuming.
Makar said there’s about 800 homes currently waiting for access in many of these rural areas.
The city’s network began with a 50-home trial pilot trial in the southwest part of town. The broader $15 million network has been funded by a combination of bonds, $2 million in federal COVID-19 disaster relief funding, an Appalachian Regional Commission grant, and eventually, subscriber revenues.
Last year, the towns of Dryden and Caroline were awarded an $8.9 million broadband grant courtesy of the New York State ConnectALL program. The award will help deliver affordable fiber capable of symmetrical speeds up to 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) to residents of both towns, which until now, had been trapped on the wrong side of the digital divide.
That money is being used to deploy 125 miles of new fiber to reach 2,650 new residences in Dryden and Caroline, but the grant requires that effort to be completed by the end of 2026.
As the the Dryden Fiber website notes, locals in range of the network have access to fiber broadband at three speed tiers: symmetrical 400 Megabits per second (Mbps) for $45 a month, symmetrical 700 Mbps for $75 a month, and symmetrical gigabit broadband service for $90 a month.
Dryden’s broadband pricing options are a dramatic improvement from the area’s regional cable monopoly Charter Communications, whose Spectrum-branded service enjoys a monopoly across vast swath of upstate New York, leaving consumers saddled with high prices, spotty coverage, slow speeds, and some of the worst customer service of any company in America.
