Flume, a service provider operating in New York City, metro Los Angeles and Connecticut, has a rather unique business model. It offers fiber broadband but has very little fiber infrastructure of its own.
“In the metro core, there’s a lot of overbuilt fiber,” said Prashanth Vijay, Flume co-founder and CEO, in an interview with Telecompetitor.
In some cases, the fiber may have been installed by a utility company, cell tower company or another entity that doesn’t offer residential broadband. Apartment buildings or other multi-dwelling units often have fiber coming to the building, enabling Flume to get a handoff in the basement.
And some cities have open access networks designed with the specific purpose of making connectivity available to service providers like Flume.
“We build edge networks, core routing and switching,” explained Vijay.
The company obtains peering to content providers such as Google and Netflix.
Flume Business Model
Flume targets areas lacking high-speed symmetrical broadband services and bundles service with managed Wi-Fi.
“You get a router, an app and a log-in,” Vijay explained. “If there’s an outage you immediately know.”
The company also adds extenders, if needed – a need that is most likely to arise in large suburban homes.
Flume expects to expand to other markets this year.
“We’re now in over 10,000 homes and we’re looking to scale to hundreds of thousands of homes,” said Vijay. He added that “We generally want to be in the Northeast and Southern California. That’s where our data centers are.”
