ISP deploys fiber service with a wrinkle—the users themselves own each network

Enlarge / Horizontal boring equipment installing fiber in Los Altos Hills, California. (credit: Los Altos Hills Community Fiber)

Our recent article about Silicon Valley residents who formed a co-op Internet service provider might have people wondering what it would take to get the same thing in their hometowns. The most obvious obstacle is price—in Los Altos Hills, California, residents have had to pay anywhere from $5,000 to $12,000 upfront for a fiber-to-the-home Internet connection.

But the company that built the Los Altos Hills network says its model isn’t just for wealthy people. “This is not the 1 percent solution, as people derisively call it to my face,” Next Level Networks CEO David Barron told Ars in a phone interview a few weeks ago. “Los Altos Hills was unique.”

Los Altos Hills residents were the first to contract with Next Level Networks, and Barron said the company has “a fairly aggressive expansion plan to go into a number of markets throughout the United States in the next five years.”