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SanfordNet Fiber
Your City's Digital Future
SanfordNet Fiber is a 45-mile fiber optic network designed to serve Sanford's historic downtown mill complex, its 600 acres of industrial parks, and more than 80 other locations, including the Southern Maine Health Care campus and our High School and Technical Center.
The system is eight times larger than the next largest municipal information network in Maine and will be one of the fastest in the entire Northeast US, with speeds 100 times faster than the national average.
The estimated $2.4 million dollar project has been funded with $769,209 in federal funds from the US Economic Development Administration (EDA) with the remainder coming from the sale of surplus City properties, such as the former Emerson School. There is no increase in taxes to build this project.
"Sanford needs a competitive edge and a differentiating factor when it comes to competing with other cities and towns for economic development and the workforce needed to support that growth. This project will provide Sanford with that edge." - Former Mayor Tom Cote
SanfordNet Fiber completed construction and started operations in May of 2019 with grant assistance from the US Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration, prevailed in building the first true "business-specific" Fiber-to-the-Premise (FTTP) Network for all of its key business establishments and community anchor institutions and has established a viable municipal backbone infrastructure off Maine's Three Ring Binder.
The estimated impact is a $47-$191 million increase in business productivity over 10 years.
The system is designed as an Open Access Non-Discriminatory Fiber Optic Network, which means that it can be utilized by a host of internet service providers (ISPs), all of which are reliant upon fiber optics as the backbone of their communications offerings. The more ISPs that use the network, the more options that will be available and the more competitive the prices, which will benefit all users, both business and residential.
As of today, the successful connections to date are 82 Businesses connected with dedicated 2-stand fiber connections:
- 12 Medical Facilities
- 20 Industrial Production Plants
- 12 Educational Facility Locations
- 4 Municipal Locations
- 11 Non-Profit Organizations
- 24 Retail Operations
Business Attraction using Sanford NetFiber will be focused on information technology industries such as software development and programming, business support services and telecommunications, as well as biopharmaceutical companies developing tomorrow's medicines. These companies create "Traded Jobs" where their goods and services are sold outside the State, importing wealth into our Region. Each Traded Job can generate up to six support jobs and/or related services. This provides a multitude of widely-varied job opportunities not currently available within Sanford.
