The new municipal broadband utility ended 2023 with just about 450 customers hooked up, according to Jeremy Pearson, the director of Fort Dodge Fiber.

“We’ve got a lot of infrastructure in the ground,” he said. “Mother Nature allowed us to work later in the year.”

He acknowledged that final completion of the network won’t happen until 2025.

“We’re going to go as hard as we can,” he said. “We’re going to keep burying our conduit and pulling our fiber until we’re complete.”

-Submitted photo
The fiber optic network is divided into 35 areas, each of which is served by a cabinet. The cabinets are distribution points capable of linking about 400 customers to the network. And they literally are cabinets full of cables .

“We’d like to thank our existing customers,” he added. “We’d like to thank the citizens for their patience as we build this big, huge network.”

The fiber optic network is divided into 35 areas, each of which is served by a cabinet. The cabinets, Pearson said, are distribution points capable of linking about 400 customers to the network. And they literally are cabinets full of cables.

Pearson said five of the 35 planned cabinets are up.

The first areas to get Fort Dodge Fiber service were the east end of Central Avenue and an area northeast of downtown.

The next areas to get connected to the service will be northern parts of the city, extending beyond the city limits to Fort Dodge Regional Airport and Harlan and Hazel Rogers Sports Complex.

-Submitted photo
The fiber optic network is divided into 35 areas, each of which is served by a cabinet. The cabinets are distribution points capable of linking about 400 customers to the network. And they literally are cabinets full of cables, as shown here.

There are 11,000 premises or unique addresses in the city that could potentially be connected to Fort Dodge Fiber.

The heart of the new fiber optic network is a data center in the basement of the Municipal Building, 819 First Ave. S.

A former gas station at Second Avenue South and Eighth Street was remodeled to serve as the base for the technicians who will maintain the system.

A customer service center was set up in Citizens Central, 617 Central Ave. That’s where people go to sign up for Fort Dodge Fiber service and pay their bills.

Fort Dodge Fiber has nine employees.

-Submitted photo
The fiber optic network is divided into 35 areas, each of which is served by a cabinet. The cabinets are distribution points capable of linking about 400 customers to the network. And they literally are cabinets full of cables .

The process of creating the network began in November 2019 with a referendum in which the voters gave the city government the power to explore setting up such a utility, with 71.6 percent voting in favor of the idea.

In July 2021, the City Council voted to proceed with creating the utility.

The name Fort Dodge Fiber debuted in January 2022.

Pearson became the utility’s director on May 2, 2022.

-Messenger file photo by Bill Shea
Orange conduit snakes along the sidewalk on the west side of North Ninth Street in April 2023 as construction of the Fort Dodge Fiber broadband utility progressed. The new utility is paid for by revenue from its customers.