Fill out the form here and tell us where you are located. We will contact you to determine if you can be connected as part of the initial network construction.
The standard connection will be a Gigabit of bandwidth delivered over fiber. You can purchase a package of Internet (e.g. 25 Meg, 50 Meg, 100 Meg) from a provider of your choice.
We expect that some providers will be offering VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephone services as part of their offerings.
As a nonprofit we are not able to connect customers for free. Bozeman Fiber does qualify for the city's TIF funding which is a 1 to 1 match program. Providers may also provide flexibility in funding connections. Businesses often partner to share installation costs, and at times building owners have been creative in getting fiber to their renters/leasees. The distance of your business from the backbone fiber, the cost of installing the fiber cable to your building, and the amount of services you want to buy will be factors in determining the final cost of connection.
Bozeman Fiber needs to pay back a portion of the initial infrastructure costs to access additional traditional financing. We are constantly looking for outside funding or grants to expand/extend our capabilities. We are not likely to enter residential services until at least 2020, and then probably in limited ares.
Gigabit is a term describing various technologies for transmitting ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second (1,000,000,000 bits per second), as defined by the IEEE 802.3-2008 standard. This is 1 Billion bits per second!!
A newer model gateway (router) supporting 1Gbps on the WAN and LAN side of the network. If using wireless, a newer WiFi gateway (router) supporting 802.11ac (review the stats as they still vary). Home laptops and desktops should have recent NIC cards for wired or recent wireless cards for WiFi services. Note that some hardware will not perform at the same speeds as your router or WiFi system, you will still benefit from the increase capacity as your multiple devices should each be receiving a portion of the higher speed. Even some hardware that indicates it is 1Gb or 1000Mb capable may not run at those full speeds.
Speed tests are notorious problems for Service Providers providing speeds up close to 1Gbps. There are multiple reasons for these differences between the line rate and the apparent rate measured by a speed test server somewhere on the internet. Local network performance can also impact the results from a speed test server, such as running a speed test from a mobile phone or mobile laptop where there is interference or poor signal quality.
Your Bozeman Fiber Service Provider should be able to direct you to the best server to use for their service. We have found that many in the Seattle area reflect very good performance for the Bozeman Fiber providers. Google Fiber provides a 1Gbps speed test, but they are located in other areas of the country. It is not reasonable to expect a 1Gbps speed test to Kansas City to accurately measure the performance of the Bozeman Fiber network nor the Service Providers on the Bozeman Fiber network. More Options: https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-find-out-if-my-computer-can-do-gigabit-speed/ https://www.speedtest.net/insights/blog/are-you-gigabit-ready-17-tips-to-help/ https://www.pcmag.com/speedtest https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1746915-true-internet-speedtest http://www.steves-internet-guide.com/internet-speeds/
Our system is State of the Art and is actually capable of 10 gigabits per second performance. We have plenty of capacity, as well as the ability to add capacity as demand grows. Once speeds like this are in place a single user is actually only online for fractions of a second, hence the impact is low. If we had a Facebook type operation here we would have to make special accommodations, but for the vast majority of us these are exceptional capabilities. Now that may change in the future and we are poised to be able to make those changes as needed.