Some fixed wireless providers are deploying fiber broadband in some areas, as illustrated by news this week from Rise Broadband. The company said it has made fiber broadband available to 60,000 residences and businesses in south Texas and 5,000 in Illinois.
“Some are areas we were already serving with fixed wireless, some network extensions and some areas where towns reached out to Rise Broadband about building fiber-to-the-home,” said a Rise spokesperson in response to an inquiry from Telecompetitor.
Rise Broadband said that its fiber Internet services are available to 25 communities in Texas. The company is active in 15 other states.
Rise’s shift toward fiber has been fueled, in part, by the investment funding it gained last year when it was acquired by GI Partners. At the time, GI Partners said that it will provide “meaningful new capital” to roll out FTTH services for homes and businesses in rural areas.
The service provider also recently said that it has completed a project that will bring fiber broadband at speeds as fast as 1 Gbps to the Illinois towns of Argenta, Forsyth, Latham, Maroa, Mt. Pulaski, Oreana, and Warrensburg. Rise said it was the first broadband option for Maroa.
These are on top of fiber broadband that the company deployed in several other Illinois markets earlier this year.
In the past, Rise grew considerably as a consolidator in the fixed wireless market, buying numerous small companies, some of which only served a few customers. The company used this strategy to become only one of 11 service providers covering more than 5% of the U.S. population.
