Bar Harbor, Maine, plans its own fiber network to avoid tenfold internet price increase

The town of Bar Harbor, Maine, is planning a $750,000 project to connect fiber optic cable to town-owned properties so its staff can have broadband internet access at work. The town has such access now but will have to start paying $45,000 a year to Charter Communications to continue using the company’s fiber network infrastructure because of an expiring agreement that has allowed the town to use the fiber at no cost beyond what it pays its internet service providers. The town pays currently approximately $4,500 per year for internet access. Instead of paying $45,000 annually to lease fiber from Charter, the town instead could put that money toward developing its own fiber-optic network that would connect to all of the town’s roughly two dozen buildings. The projected cost of building the network would be around $750,000, but the town’s expenses in building and maintaining the network likely would be significantly less if it finds cost efficiencies and entities that could lease unused fiber from the town. Those specific cost savings to the town would become more apparent after the town puts out a request for proposals, likely in the latter half of 2021, members of the committee said.