Dear Editor:

Spectrum is committed to improving the communities we serve and where our customers and employees live and work. We offer low-cost broadband service to eligible households and invest billions of dollars each year to continue to extend our network and expand connectivity from coast to coast. Southport is no exception and as stated in our letter to the editor published in the Boothbay Register on Monday, June 13, we remain committed to ensuring residents in Southport who currently do not have access to broadband get the connectivity they need.  

That is why Spectrum will be making the investment, at no cost to the town, to ensure residents of the community that have no access to broadband today are not left behind. In fact, we have already begun the planning process to extend our network to unserved homes and businesses in Southport and will be making additional announcements in the months to come. 

This commitment is part of Spectrum’s longstanding record of identifying and connecting unserved communities in Maine, just as we are doing in Etna, Newburgh and Swanville. In fact, in 2021 alone, Spectrum’s high-speed internet service was extended to reach an additional 14,000 homes and small businesses in Maine, many in small towns and rural areas just like Southport. Our company is proud to deliver high-quality products and services, which include access to gigabit speeds across our entire footprint, no data caps, no modem fees, and no annual contracts.  Our quality service is provided by U.S.-based, insourced employees, including 660 Mainers, who live and work in the communities they serve.

We continue to believe that the best way to ensure universal broadband access is to focus government resources on areas without service instead of spending taxpayer dollars to duplicate services in places that already have broadband from one or more providers. As we have done elsewhere in Maine we will evaluate instances in which service can be expanded using private investment and we look forward to working with state and local government to foster public-private partnerships designed to bring broadband to unserved areas.

Melinda Kinney

Spectrum