Broadband Committee

Fiber Optic Network
Tidewater Telecom’s recently-expanded fiber optic network in Union currently reaches almost two-thirds of all the addresses in the Town, offering very high data rates under several plans. Check with Tidewater at www.tidewater.net to determine service availability at your address.

Cable Network
Spectrum, part of Charter Communications, operates a cable network that also reaches almost two-thirds of all the addresses in the Town, offering very high data rates under several plans. Check with Spectrum at www.spectrum.com to determine availability at your address.

Radio Networks
The radio networks . . . satellite (e.g., Starlink), the cellular services (e.g., T-Mobile), and Redzone . . . offer an attractive high-speed alternative to the wired services (fiber and cable), especially in remote locations not currently reached by the wired networks. They do have certain limitations. Local topography (e.g., hills) and tree cover can interfere with the radio signal, and there can be some degradation in severe weather and in periods of congestion. They all offer an opportunity to test the service at your location before committing.

Starlink can be reached at www.starlink.com, and T-Mobile can be reached at www.t-mobile.com.

In 2024, with support from the Town of Union, Tidewater Telecom received a major grant from a federal funding source to expand its initial high-speed fiber optic network in the Town to reach an additional nearly 400 addresses, mostly in relatively rural areas that did not previously have access to wired high-speed Internet service. The expanded network was completed later that year, and connections to the network are being made in response to customer requests.

To determine whether fiber access is available at your address, and to request a connection, visit the Tidewater website at www.tidewater.net, select the pink box (“South Bristol, Union, and New Castle”), and fill out the application form online. You can also call Tidewater at 844.763.9900.

Tidewater will get back to you quickly with a determination of service at your address, and to schedule a site visit to determine how to run fiber from the nearest utility pole to your house (an aerial run or buried conduit.)

Tidewater is continuing to expand its fiber network to reach additional locations in Union. If you find that Tidewater’s fiber network does not yet reach your address and you are interested in high-speed fiber Internet access, it is important to go to Tidewater’s web site and fill out the application form to express your interest. Tidewater is using these forms to identify pockets of interest as a key input to its network expansion planning.

The Union Broadband Committee was chartered by the Select Board in October 2020, to advise the Board on how best to bring high-speed Internet services to the entire Town. At that time, high-speed service was available in one form or another to about 60 percent of the residents, mostly in the higher-density portions of the Town. But there were about 500 locations in the Town that had only slow DSL (digital subscriber line) service, provided over telephone lines.

The Committee worked with all service providers in Union, plus certain other municipal organizations, to identify the best path forward, and quickly settled on a fiber optic network as the principal target. In 2024, with Town support, Tidewater Telecom was awarded a federal grant to expand its initial fiber optic network to reach nearly 400 additional locations, most of them in relatively rural portions of the Town. That expansion has now been completed, with the result that well under a hundred addresses remain without wired access (fiber or cable) to high-speed service.

Recently, Spectrum announced its intention to upgrade its cable service statewide. And in the last few years, the radio technologies . . . satellite (e.g., Starlink) and cellular (T-Mobile and others) . . . have emerged as an effective high-speed alternative, especially for the remaining locations not reached by the wired services.

The Committee has been chaired since its inception by Adam Fuller, who has also served as the Committee’s Select board representative. Others who have served on the Committee include Renee Flanders, John Mountainland, Linda Mountainland, Holly Savage, Michael Ross, Kimberly Grindle, Christine Norris, and John Gibbons.

The Committee can be contacted at bbcunion24@gmail.com with questions or comments.