The city with the best fiber-optic network in America might surprise you

The American city with the most sophisticated fiber network is Ammon, Idaho, population 16,500. The city offers residents performance, pricing, and options that inhabitants of a metropolis dominated by one or two internet service providers can only dream of. Ammon is a true local network, where residents own the fiber and providers compete to serve them. “If you were to ask me what the key component of Ammon is, I would say it’s a broadband infrastructure as a utility,” says Bruce Patterson, Ammon’s technology director and one of the key drivers behind the network. “We’ve just found a way to make it a true public infrastructure, like a road.” Residents of Ammon can choose to opt in to the network, which the city began building in 2011. Patterson expects that by the end of 2019, 900 of the town’s 4,500 residences will have joined the network. The city is growing, adding new residential addresses at a rate of about one per day, and Patterson says that every single developer is choosing to include the fiber infrastructure in new construction. Patterson describes four ways in which Ammon’s model is superior to other existing networks.