City of Salisbury

NORTH CAROLINA

Residential & Commercial

– The Customer

As a trusted telecommunications provider in Salisbury, North Carolina, Hotwire Communications was selected to operate Salisbury’s city-wide fiber-optic network. Hotwire Communications prides itself on redundancy, and our backup simulsat–dish resides in Salisbury. If the satellite feed directly into the Hotwire Technology Center was ever interrupted, the infrastructure in Salisbury would be automatically activated to ensure all Hotwire customers are live 100% of the time.

The City of Salisbury deployed and installed a municipal fiber-optic broadband network to provide communications coverage to 100% of its residents and businesses. As a resource, Salisbury 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 Salisbury Receives Service from a Singular Network.

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

10 Gigabit Service Capacity

Hotwire Communications is responsible for all operating and maintenance expenses for the next 10 years saving the city $20 million

Upgrading to Advanced Features of Fision®, include 4K video, ReplayTV & more

Kept 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 Salisbury, costing the city 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, such as 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 Salisbury 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 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, along with 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.