Skagit County

Public Fiber Networks
City of Mount Vernon (MVFN)
City of Burlington (MVFN)
Port of Skagit County (MVFN)

Private Fiber Networks
Black Rock Cable – Dark Fiber

History
In 2002 the City of Mount Vernon received an economic development grant for deploying a fiber optic network around the City.  At the time there were several Dot-Com companies coming into the community and a tremendous amount of private investment in these.  The city pursued RFP’s and different methodologies for providing public fiber.  They settled on CSS Communications to license and provide the first interconnections through the network.  CSS mirrored their efforts from the Port of Bellingham HTCI network and began extending the City infrastructure.  As the network expanded it became clear that additional providers would need access to the network, and due to limited fiber counts the best way to distribute was using Passive Optical Network (PON) technology.  CSS and the City deployed this new technology and continued to expand the network, eventually Diversint and OpenAccess joined the city network.  The City now performs the PON maintenance while providers are responsible for extensions to the network for clients.

Since the initial deployment, the network has expanded to include the City of Burlington, and the Port of Skagit County.