Vexus Fiber kicked off the new year by launching service to its first customers in Huntsville, Texas, after beginning construction four months ago.
The Lubbock-based company said nearly 500 Huntsville homes and businesses are now connected to Vexus Fiber, with first active service areas located south and southwest of Interstate 45. Construction is expected to be complete by early next year.
Cameron Miller, Vexus VP of East Texas and Louisiana, said in a statement the Huntsville launch “represents a major milestone in our commitment to infrastructure and economic development in Texas.”
Aside from Huntsville, Vexus operates fiber networks in nine other Texas markets (Lubbock, Amarillo, Wichita Falls, Abilene, Rio Grande Valley, Laredo, San Angelo and Nacogdoches), five Louisiana markets (Hammond, Covington, Mandeville, Lake Charles and Alexandria) as well as in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
In terms of ongoing deployments, Vexus is also undertaking projects in Borger and Denison, Texas, Slidell in Louisiana and in Santa Fe and Las Cruces, New Mexico.
The operator is building fiber on a pace of around 12,000 new homes passed per month, Vexus CEO Jim Gleason told Fierce Telecom in November. So far, it has just over 300,000 fiber passings and is aiming to reach “north of a million” passings over the next five years.
Vexus merged with regional operator MetroNet in June 2022, though the companies have kept their separate brands and serve different footprints.
Speed tiers on Vexus range from 150-meg up to 1-gig for residential customers, whereas businesses can access speeds of up to 100 Gbps. But multi-gig is on the horizon for Vexus residential subscribers, as Gleason said a 2.5-gig residential package is in the works.
Vexus isn’t the only provider expanding in the southeast U.S. PhireLink, a new fiber and fixed wireless joint venture, is aiming to acquire at least 20 local ISPs in the region to build a sizable broadband competitor.
Thus far, PhireLink has acquired one fiber network in Slidell, Louisiana, but it is “just getting started,” CEO Glen Post told Fierce in December.