Regional provider Fastwyre Broadband is investing more than $65 million in new and existing markets in southwest and south central Louisiana. A Fastwyre spokesperson told Telecompetitor that “the vast majority of the $65 million investment is self-funded with small federal and state grant funding in more remote areas.”
Fastwyre is a portfolio company of Madison Dearborn Partners, LLC and Catania ABC Partners.
The company says that it will build or expand fiber broadband networks to support symmetrical services that eventually will reach 10 Gbps. Initially the company will offer symmetrical speeds of 2 Gbps. The communities covered include Moss Bluff, Cameron Parish, Carlyss, DeRidder, Elizabeth, Grand Lake, Leesville, Oakdale, Pitkin, Sugartown and Westlake.
Monthly pricing is $44.99 per month for speeds to 100 Mbps to $69.99 for speeds as fast as 1 Gbps. Services that can be supported include e-commerce, virtual learning, agricultural technology, telehealth and entertainment, Fastwyre noted.
In an interview with Telecompetitor last year, Jim Patterson, Fastwyre’s chief strategy officer, emphasized the company’s “Must-Be-Present-To-Win strategy.” That strategy focuses on making sure that operations in new markets include enough homes passed and enough demand to support the hiring of local sales reps, operational personnel and central office personnel so that outsiders need not be brought in.
Patterson said then that the company would seek at grants from the USDA and the FCC in Missouri, Louisiana, Nebraska. Alabama and Texas and that it was exploring the Alternative Connect America Cost Model (A-CAM) program to serve “very, very rural properties.”
Last November, the company said that it would build a network in Bellevue, NE. In August, it had said it would deploy a network in Nevada, MO. That network would build on a network that recently had been built to serve the Sedalia and Warrensburg area.
