As more and more towns are jumping on the bandwagon of partnering with  providers to build faster internet in their small, rural communities which broadband has passed by, one name is beginning to rise to the top: Consolidated Communications.

Chesterfield was the first New Hampshire town to partner with a private internet provider for a fiber buildout, as soon as the law made such partnerships possible. With customers already signing in to much faster internet, a flurry of other towns have jumped into the process. And so far, Consolidated Communications appears to be the top choice.

Both Rindge and Dublin plan to present warrant articles this March to build fiber in town, both with Consolidated Communications. Chesterfield, which already has customers online, also went with a Consolidated Communications proposal for the work.

There are already customers served by Consolidated Communications in the Monadnock Region, though almost all residential customers have access to DSL through a copper line, not fiber, as is proposed in both Dublin and Rindge.

While many Monadnock Region customers first experience with Consolidated Communications occurred when the company bought out FairPoint, Consolidated Communications has been a presence in the communications game for more than 125 years. 

It operates in 23 states, mostly servicing rural and suburban towns.

“This is what we do,” said Rob Koester, Senior Vice President of Consumer Products for Consolidated Communications. “Geographies in our other locations look very similar to Rindge. We’ve got a lot of experience in rural broadband.”

Koester said there are potentially four towns, including Rindge and Dublin, hoping to bond for a fiber infrastructure this March that would use Consolidated Communications to build the network. He said the company is prepared to fulfill all four contracts, if they pass at the polls, within the promised two-year time frame. 

In all four towns, Koester said, the company would have to provide service to a total of about 8,500 addresses. To compare, Consolidated Communications has completed a project to build a fiber network to a total of 22,000 addressed in New York within a time frame of 12-16 months.

Koester said the company would treat all four towns as separate projects, and build them concurrently. 

The fiber buildout for Chesterfield, which approved a broadband bond in 2019, took about six weeks to construct, and about six weeks to hook up all customers, Koester said. That project is nearly complete, with customers having access to speeds as high as 150 megabits per second, with Consolidated Communications waiting on an equipment order to complete the final work to allow residents to access up to 1 gigabit per second speed. 

Koester said Chesterfield has been a proof of concept that public-private partnerships can work, as Consolidated Communications has been able to sign up as many or more customers as were anticipated when the project passed. 

Those currently served by the company in Rindge have provided mixed reviews of the service. Some say the speeds promised have not lived up to the speeds delivered. 

Rob Arsenault of Rindge said he continuously has trouble getting the speeds he’s paying for. Sometimes, a call to Consolidated will solve the issue, but never long term, he said.

“they’ve never offered the speed they said we could get, but when you complain, the service only gets better temporarily,” Arsenault said. 

Others said they’ve seen their service improve under Consolidated Communications, when it took the existing system when it acquired the previous operator, FairPoint. 

Jim Jeffries, of East Rindge, said the company has always been consistent in responding to any issues. He said he only anticipates improvements if the area gets fiber service.

“The systems and the lines now versus what’s being proposed, is like apples and oranges,” Jeffries said. “DSL by its nature is prone to problems.”

Koester said, those issues will likely be alleviated by the change in technology. Fiber is fundamentally different from copper wire, which is what most Consolidated Communications customers in the area currently use. Communications through copper can be distorted by a number of things including the weather, which could lead to static or crackling on a phone line, for example, he said. But with fiber, which uses light to carry information, the link is “either on or off” Koester said. 

“Very few people would ever experience degraded service with fiber. And the tools for troubleshooting any problems are robust,” Koester said. It’s easier with fiber to precisely locate an interrupted line and repair it compared with copper, Koester said. That means both that disruptions happen less often, and take less time to repair.

“I can tell you our techs are just as excited as the towns to have this in place,” Koester said. 

As for speeds, customers with a DSL line who complain of speed decreases are usually facing a problem of bandwidth, Koester said. The more devices that are active within a home, the slower the connection may be. A larger bandwidth can solve that problem.

Currently, DSL customers in the region typically have packages that provide between 10 and 15 megabits per second of download, and higher end customers may have between 80 and 100 megabits per second. The most common for fiber, however, is usually between 50 and 100 megabits per second. Those higher bandwidths usually resolve lag issues. 

“If you increase your bandwidth five or tenfold, you’re giving a lot more room to breathe,” Koester said. 

Phil Motta, chair of Rindge’s TelTech Committee, said the biggest benefit of access to fiber is providing choice. While Consolidated Communications has agreed to provide fiber service to every address in town, including those one dirt and private roads, only those who want to can sign on.

“People are looking for choices,” Motta said. “I think it’s going to do a lot of good for everyone in town.”

Motta said he expects a new fiber network to increase reliability and would put Consolidated Communications in a position to better respond to customers. 

Rindge voters will vote on whether to approve the bond for broadband at the polls on March 10 at the Rindge Memorial School. 

 

Ashley Saari can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 244 or asaari@ledgertranscript.com. She’s on Twitter @AshleySaariMLT.