When the Ashland Electric Department began laying its own fiber in the mid-1990s, it was just the beginning of what would later become the Ashland Fiber Network. It was a risky move competing with Charter, but here it is 25 years later, and AFN, which started connecting its first customers in 1999, has more than 65 miles of fiber and 125 miles of coax in town.
According to Chad Sobotka, AFN Operations Manager, the mission of AFN is to offer quality internet service and top-tier customer service at an affordable price.
“We have a fiduciary responsibility to the citizens of Ashland, not a board of directors or shareholders,” Chad said. “We strive to offer services that other providers cannot. For example, during Covid, we provided free internet service to students and teachers for much longer than any other provider in Ashland. When we discontinued this service, we contacted each user to ensure they knew about their choices and cost options to continue service. We provide low-cost service for those who are economically disadvantaged. We also offer free WiFi service in select areas of the downtown corridor. We support the Ashland School District by providing fiber to each of their buildings, redundant 10-Gigabit internet connections, and space in our head-end to keep their servers and networking equipment. We do all of this for less than most businesses pay for a single fiber connection in other cities.”
AFN is a unique, municipal-owned, hybrid open-access network. That means citizens can connect to it directly with the City or through their local ISP partners, like Ashland Home Net. Ashland Home Net offers additional products and services, such as extended support hours and home and business telephone connections utilizing voice over IP (VOIP).
“We take pride in our customer service,” Chad said. “When you call us, you will speak to someone who lives in the Rogue Valley. Our customer service team will guide you through the connection process, explain the services we offer, and find the one that fits your needs.”
AFN is best known for its cable modem internet service, but they offer many other additional products.
“Outside of Ashland we provide rural wireless connectivity,” Chad said. “For businesses in Ashland, we provide dedicated fiber connectivity with speeds up to 10-Gigabit download and upload. We continually expand our footprint for low-cost fiber services. In select areas of town, we offer 1-Gigabit download and upload for $90/month. By the end of the year, we will offer this service to the entire downtown corridor.
“This summer we will also be providing residential gateway router service. This new service offering will include parental control and security software. Parents will be able to monitor and limit which mobile device apps their children use, have the ability to prioritize individual devices on the home network, and disable internet access for any device on the network with the touch of a button.
“We are also deploying XGS-PON to select areas of Ashland. Through this service we will offer download speeds up to 2.5-Gigabit with upload speeds up to 1-Gigabit. The Beach Creek subdivision is our first 100% fiber optic neighborhood in town. We will soon be offering this service to the area around Granite Street, the area between Palm and Wightman, and to businesses in the south end of Ashland.”
Chad agrees that it is very unusual for a city to have multiple options for broadband internet connectivity. It is even more unusual for one to be provided by the local government.
“AFN is a small but very diverse team of seven dedicated individuals,” he said. “Most people in town know Dena, our lead field technician, who has worked at AFN since its inception. Joining her in the field splicing fiber and troubleshooting coax are Nick and Colton. If you call AFN, you will probably talk to James, our customer service representative. We now have two junior network engineers who help to keep the network running: Esteban was promoted to this position last year, and Edgar was hired just a few weeks ago. We also work closely with the internal IT department along with GIS, which provides mapping data. All three divisions are under the leadership of Jason Wegner. As the Operations Manager and Senior Network Engineer, I am now enjoying my 18th year working at AFN.”
For more info and to help support your citizen-owned fiber network, call 541-552-9222. You can also see them at ashlanfiber.net and on Facebook and Instagram.
