Indiana previously owned a statewide fiber provider called Intelligent Fiber Network, which had more than 5,000 miles of infrastructure. However, the company was acquired by Zayo Group last year.
Hoosier Net plans to offer a range of services, including Ethernet transport from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps, direct Internet access up to 10G, dark fiber, 10G or 100G wavelength services, and cellular base station backhaul. Services will be available to its owner members, telecommunications providers and direct commercial customers, including hospitals, schools and government agencies.
Hoosier Net and the current owner-member fiber system span thousands of miles in Indiana and are well positioned to expand and extend Indiana's mid-mile infrastructure to reduce the cost of connecting unserved and underserved areas," said John Greene, chairman of Hoosier Net and CEO of New Lisbon Telephone Company. costs to areas." The organization is also looking to build connections outside of Indiana. One of its founding members is Independents Fiber Network, a subsidiary of Ohio-based Com Net, Inc (CNI), which was founded in 2003 to help provide backhaul to rural and underserved communities in Ohio, Michigan and Indiana. He said that in western Ohio, we see a need to move beyond state borders and develop a regional network to support educational institutions, businesses and surrounding communities, all of which will benefit from Hoosier Net's increased speed, bandwidth and reduced latency.
The consortium is also working with INDATEL, a national member-owned fiber optic transmission network consisting of 400,000 miles of fiber and more than 1,100 national PoPs. Its members include more than 700 rural exchange carriers. Just as Hoosier Net plans to do, INDATEL provides Ethernet, dedicated Internet access and wavelength services.
After the new group was formed in Indiana, 13 electric cooperatives in Arkansas banded together to form a wholesale middle-mile fiber provider called Diamond State Networks, and Diamond State program manager Doug Maglothin says it is working with a number of other states to form a similar group.
Its birth also comes as states are ramping up to allocate billions of dollars in government broadband funding, including $42.5 billion from the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program and another $1 billion from the Middle Mile Grant program. Indiana is one of more than 30 states that have said they plan to participate in the BEAD program.
