City of Salisbury

NORTH CAROLINA

Residential/Commercial

– The Customer

The City of Salisbury deployed and installed a municipal fiber optics broadband network to provide communications coverage to 100% of its residents and businesses. As a resource, the City understood that fiber optics could serve the greatest long-term value to its citizens and thus they created Fibrant to manage the daily operations of their network.

PROFILE:

Corporate Headquarters of Cheerwine Soda, supermarket chain Food Lion, and the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association.
One of the first municipally owned 10 gigabit capacity networks in the United States.

SQ Miles

Est. Population

Homes Passed

HIGHLIGHTS

100% of the City of Salisbury is able to receive service from the same network.

Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) Technology.

10 Gigabit service capacity, to offer customers this service level.

Responsible for all operating and maintenance expenses for the next 10 years saving the city at least $20 million.

Upgrading features of existing services to include advanced features of Fision, including 4K video, ReplayTV & more

Keeping nearly 100% of all Fibrant employees in transition.

THE CHALLENGE

The difficulty of utilizing and monetizing the fiber optics system upon deployment proved challenging to the City, costing them millions of dollars per year in management and operating expenses. Services provided were basic tier, and while Fibrant could offer customers incredibly fast Internet speeds at 10 gigabits with an in-home connection, they could not optimize other features like their TV or phone to get the most out of the high-capacity network. To remedy this situation, Hotwire Communications proposed a lease agreement where the Florida-based company would operate and maintain the network, monetizing it on behalf of the City while improving services through capital upgrades, something that a City constrained by annual budgets could not do.

THE SOLUTION

After unanimous City Council approval and putting it to a public vote for the citizens of Salisbury to ultimately decide, an overwhelming majority of 81.2% of voters approved of the lease to Hotwire Communications. Through proper asset management, and continuing capital upgrades, Hotwire Communications will improve the overall system to include all facets and advanced features of their Fision products providing a better value to the citizens of Salisbury on their initial network investment. Additionally, the company maintained nearly all of the former Fibrant employees and will continue to operate and maintain the city-wide network all without interruption to services during the ownership transition.