Archtop Fiber, which began its first installations for customers in Midtown Kingston in March, provides a fiberoptic broadband system out of its center at iPark 87, 300 Enterprise Drive.
At the tour, Hinchey, D-Saugerties, spoke with company officials about the importance of providing high-speed Internet, especially in rural communities in the Mid-Hudson region.
According to the company’s website, Archtop Fiber has invested $350 million in private funding to build 2,500 miles of fiber-optic infrastructure in the area.
Beginning with Kingston and the towns of Ulster, Hurley, and Saugerties, the company has continued to expand throughout 2024, into Red Hook and Rhinebeck as well as Catskill.
The company said it is currently in its first phase of development, but seeks to eventually expand from the border of New York state and Pennsylvania to the Berkshire Mountains on the border with Massachusetts, reaching around 300,000 homes.
“It’s imperative that we build out Internet service to all of our rural communities,” Hinchey said in an interview after the tour. “Internet is no longer a luxury, it’s a necessity, it’s an economic development driver, it’s a health and safety factor.”
“We saw through the pandemic what it means to not have reliable Internet service,” Hinchey added.
Hinchey said it’s unique for a company to be planning to offer coverage in sparsely populated areas as generally it’s not as profitable as providing Internet in large towns or cities. “Our rural communities have been left behind as it pertains to infrastructure investment because it’s not lucrative,” she said. “You can’t make as much money running Internet to a mile of road if it has two houses on it as you can a mile in a city.”
Many of the rural areas in the Mid-Hudson region are also farming communities, which Hinchey said could benefit greatly from broadband Internet access. “To be talking about what that could mean for farmers, and our agricultural communities that are often the last ones to be able to get that infrastructure, that’s exciting,” she said.
Shawn Beqaj, chief development officer for Archtop Fiber, explained more about the impact of broadband Internet access on farming communities. “It’s existential for them,” he said. “The equipment that they buy, the services that they need to use in order to employ their business practices, are now dependent on broadband.”
“If you’re a farmer and you don’t have access to broadband, you are disadvantaged by not being able to deploy the latest in technology, which makes your product less valuable,” Beqaj added.
In addition to smaller communities gaining access to high-speed Internet through fiber optics, company officials touted the ability for area residents to have options in choosing Internet providers. Jeff DeMond, the company’s chairman and CEO, mentioned competition with Mid-Hudson Cable, which provides a bulk of the Internet coverage in Greene County.
“The fact that we’re now moving the current phase of our construction into part of Mid-Hudson’s service area is visibly causing them to reinvest in parts of their community that they hadn’t yet reached,” DeMond said. “We will both be offering service in these communities. That can only lead to better service, greater investment, probably better and lower pricing for consumers, and it just expands all your options.”
DeMond added that Archtop Fiber is working with the communities it is servicing, through programs like Ulster BOCES, which is expected to move into iPark 87 in 2025. “We can train them right here in the same building, through BOCES, give them internships while they’re learning, and then give them jobs when they graduate,” he said. “They don’t even leave the campus.”
Rural communities will continue to be a primary focus, according to the company’s chief customer officer Diane Quennoz. “Most of our careers combined have operated in rural America, so this is a place that we love and we thrive in,” she said. “Rural America has always been important to us.”
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