I started fantasizing about moving to Idaho when I heard about the broadband. I knew the state was a gem — I didn’t know a 20,000-person city leads the entire country in equitable internet access. In Ammon, Idaho, every home has access to a fiber optic connection with 1 gigabit per second download and upload speeds. It costs roughly $30 per month. And it’s not controlled by a single big company. Nine different providers can offer you that connection.
And all those attempts to drive it out of the market meant competition that wound up lowering consumer prices from their $150-a-month highs. The city’s long-time administrator went on the ILSR podcast in 2020 to discuss how much of a success it’s been for the town — and revealed that its municipal network now makes an annual profit of $280,000.