Amidst aging infrastructure, Ashland seeks to modernize city-owned internet

Ashland, Oregon, created the Ashland Fiber Network in the late 1990s, after discovering the city’s only internet provider wouldn’t upgrade its infrastructure to meet rising demands. Ashland decided to offer its own internet service. Now all this equipment is starting to become outdated. While AFN was a pioneer for city-owned internet at its inception, the service has since fallen behind other municipal fiber networks. For the current system to work, a long chain of networking devices need to be strung up throughout the city to translate the signal between fiber-optics and cable. AFN is now following in the footsteps of others and learning how the company can make the system easier to upgrade in the future. But with major upgrades come major costs. It could take up to $10 million to replace all those cable boxes around the city with fiber-optics. The Ashland city council is considering entering into a public-private partnership, which would mean the city giving away some of its stake in the network to a private company and allowing them to run the day-to-day operations of the service.