Empire Fiber Internet brings 100% fibre network to Berwick, PA
Empire Fiber Internet has launched a 100% fibre broadband network in Berwick, Pennsylvania, backed by a $1.4 million local infrastructure investment. The network is now live and available to more than 2,800 residential and commercial premises, with installations open for scheduling immediately.
The company offers symmetrical upload and download speeds across tiers ranging from 500 Mbps to 2 Gbps, with no data caps and, it says, transparent pricing. Customer support is provided by a locally staffed team operating around the clock. Chief executive Kevin Dickens framed the launch as a commitment to a community he described as underserved by existing options: "Fiber delivers the speed and reliability that modern life requires. And just as important, our customers can count on responsive, local support when they need it."
The deal
Empire Fiber Internet was founded in 1896 as a telephone operator in upstate New York and has since expanded into a regional fibre provider serving homes and businesses across New York state and Pennsylvania. The Berwick rollout is its latest geographic extension into the Keystone State, though the company did not disclose the number of existing Pennsylvania markets it already serves, nor the specific technology vendor or equipment supplier underpinning the new network build.
Chris Berleth, President and CEO of the Columbia Montour Chamber of Commerce, welcomed the arrival of a second broadband option for local businesses: "That kind of private investment and increased choice helps strengthen the environment in which our local businesses operate and grow." Empire Fiber plans a community event at McBride Memorial Library on 22 September to introduce the service to residents.
Market context
The US fixed broadband market is undergoing a substantial infrastructure shift, driven in part by federal funding flowing through the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) programme, which allocated $42.5 billion across states to close connectivity gaps. Pennsylvania has been among the states actively mapping underserved census blocks to direct that capital. While Empire Fiber's Berwick investment appears to be privately funded rather than grant-backed, the broader environment of federal subsidy is reshaping competitive dynamics for regional internet service providers, compressing the window in which smaller operators can move into communities ahead of subsidised incumbents or municipal fibre schemes.
Berwick sits in Columbia County, a semi-rural area where legacy cable and DSL infrastructure from larger national operators has historically limited consumer choice. The arrival of a pure-fibre alternative with symmetrical speeds positions Empire Fiber against the asymmetric cable products that still dominate many small-town Pennsylvania markets. Symmetrical connectivity is of particular value to businesses running cloud-based point-of-sale, video conferencing and large file-transfer workloads, and to the growing share of households with multiple remote workers.
Standards and regulatory read-across
Fibre network deployments in the US are subject to state public utility commission oversight and, where federal funding is involved, to National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) reporting requirements. Empire Fiber did not indicate whether any portion of the Berwick build drew on state or federal subsidy programmes, which would trigger additional build-out milestone and open-access obligations. The Federal Communications Commission's updated broadband map, which switched to a location-by-location fabric model in 2023, will determine how Berwick's new fibre availability is reflected in national coverage data and whether it affects future BEAD allocations to the area.
For enterprise and SMB customers in the region, the key near-term question will be service-level agreement terms and the speed at which Empire Fiber can work through its installation backlog as demand materialises after the community launch.