MetroNet Backing Off in Mankato

While details are fuzzy, it appears that Indiana-based MetroNet is backing off from plans to serve the entire city of Mankato, Minnesota following an announcement by the incumbent telephone company that it will be upgrading to fiber over the next few years.

As detailed in an article in the Mankato Free Press, MetroNet made a splash earlier this year with their announcement to overbuild Mankato, a city of 39,000 in south-central Minnesota. MetroNet had been working with the City on a franchise agreement, as well as concessions on permitting costs and other logistics. Then Consolidated Communications announced that it was going to replace its copper facilities with fiber, and the announcement seems to have chilled MetroNet's ambitions.

“They’ve made a decision to move on,” Arntz (Mankato City Manager Susan Arntz) said of MetroNet, which as recently as this spring was promising to provide top-speed internet service at low prices to virtually every neighborhood in the city. -- from Mankato Free Press article, 7/11/21

MetroNet has been aggressively announcing new overbuilds across the nation. In addition to several cities in Iowa, the company recently announced plans for a fiber network in Bryan, Texas.