Bar Harbor’s town council met this week with Tilson Technology Management, a Portland-based information technology and consulting firm, to discuss options for expanding fiber-optic and broadband Internet access, the Mount Desert Islander reported.
The Tilson report includes plans for a four-phase build-out of a town-owned fiber network. The first two phases would connect municipal buildings and schools, and represent a $2.5 million capital expense. Including two more phases, extending the network to all homes and business in the town would cost a total of $15 million.
According to the company’s website, Tilson has several locations in the United States, takes on network deployment projects everywhere in the United States and information technology and consulting projects worldwide. The growth of the multlimillion-dollar firm is attributed to a commitment to innovation and a focus on government work, such as a contract awarded in 2015 to design, engineer and build a broadband network in a section of Ellsworth.
In Bar Harbor, the town’s Communications Technology Task Force Chairman Matt Hochman said some rural areas of the town do not currently have access to high-speed Internet.
“The incumbent [Internet service] providers are never going to want to serve those areas, because it’s not profitable. A town network may be the only way they are ever going to get broadband,” Hochman said.
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