Get ready for more competition for internet and TV service in Des Moines. Today Indiana based MetroNet announced it’s planning to install a $70 million fiber optic network in the metro.
Homeowners will likely be seeing crews installing fiber optic lines overhead or underground as MetroNet wires the entire city. But the wire is not copper, it’s a tube of light.
When it comes to using the internet, speed is usually a top priority for users like Drake Student Grace Long.
“Fast internet speed is something that is important to me as a college student,” she said.
And now Long and the rest of the Capitol City are hearing about a new private provider called MetroNet.
“A lot higher speeds for kind of the same costs is kind of our model,” MetroNet spokesman Keith Leonhardt said.
Leonhardt said MetroNet is already in several Iowa cities like Ames, Ankeny and Urbandale. Now it’s planning its biggest Iowa operation so far … Des Moines.
“Iowa has just been a terrific state,” Leonhardt said.
The idea is to bring in crews to install fiber optic lines to every home in the city. MetroNet foots the $70 million cost with no financial help from the city of Des Moines. The fast-as-light fiber optic signal would provide the normal range of phone and tv offerings along with up to 10 gigabits of internet speed. It’s a month-to-month service with no long-term contracts.
“When we come into a marketplace we are providing an opportunity for people to have a choice for those services. Maybe to move up to a more reliable and faster internet connection. and in the process, everything gets better. Our competitors, we believe in healthy competition. Our competitors’ service gets better for the residents that actually stay with those services,” Leonhardt said.
MetroNet will begin the fiber optic installation this fall and the plan is to begin hooking up customers as soon as the spring of 2022.
Mediacom, one of MetroNet’s competitors, told KCCI in a statement that it welcomes MetroNet to the neighborhood and looks forward to fair and level competition.
