Visionary eyes fiber frenzy in American West

• Visionary Broadband is a fiber and fixed wireless provider in the western U.S.
• It currently has 35,000 fiber passings, with plans to add 18,000 more this year
• Visionary thinks its FWA roots put it in a good position for BEAD

Wyoming-based Visionary Broadband’s got quite the resume in both the fiber and wireless space.

Visionary this year won nearly $27 million in ARPA grant awards to provide fiber broadband in remote areas of Wyoming. It’s also got a foothold in Colorado, Montana and Washington state.

State grants have helped Visionary recently gain seven new markets, CEO Brian Worthen told Fierce. Those include three markets in Colorado (Buena Vista, Cañon City and Pagosa Springs), two in Montana (Hardin, White Hall) and two in Wyoming (Centennial, Glendo).

From a grant standpoint, “we like small towns,” said Worthen, as they have less competition. But Visionary also has some larger markets in the mix.

“We are in other markets where there are 50,000 or 60,000 in population, but we’re also in markets where there’s 110,” he said. “So we’re not picky.”

Visionary’s even deployed fiber-to-the-ranch. In fact, the company once upgraded a ranch’s broadband in exchange for half a bison!

“The ranch owner drove up to his truck, and he’s got half a bison all wrapped up, and I was able to hand out bison steaks to all of our employees,” Worthen said. “It was fun.”

Wireless roots

While Visionary is currently fiber-focused, it actually started as a fixed wireless access (FWA) provider. “It’s part of our DNA,” Worthen said, noting FWA makes up the largest part of its network.

It was only in 2020 when Visionary “really started escalating fiber” with residential deployments. Prior to that, Visionary was only building fiber for wholesale business customers.

Keep in mind that this was before IIJA and the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program came along. But Worthen said Visionary realized “there was just going to be this natural shift in the marketplace from old copper technologies to either a wireless or a fiber platform.”

Once the company started doing grant work in Wyoming, it decided to jump on the fiber wave before other providers swooped in.

“We could not have all of our eggs in a fixed wireless basket or a business fiber basket,” he said.

To further its fiber ambitions, Visionary in 2022 secured $100 million in capital from private equity firm GTCR.

Right now, Visionary has 35,000 fiber passings (including residential and business locations). It’s targeting another 18,000 passings for 2024 and will shoot for another 20,000 for the next couple of years.

“We did quite a bit in 2023 but we’re actually finding ourselves more working on grants this year than we anticipated,” Worthen said. Part of that has to do with construction taking longer in some rural areas.

For instance, one of Visionary’s projects involves building to homes that are “on a half-acre to three-acre lot, so the drop takes quite a bit longer.”

“It just takes longer to construct the same number of homes as a denser city area,” said Worthen.

He estimates roughly 97% of Visionary’s deployments this year are fiber, because its wireless technology can’t meet grant program speed requirements. Providers using Capital Projects Fund (CPF) money must deploy speeds of at least 100/100 Mbps.

Best of both worlds?

Fiber may be top-of-mind for Visionary, but it’s not leaving FWA in the dust when it comes to BEAD.

“There’s quite a bit of concern at the state level that BEAD money won’t last, especially if it’s all spent on fiber,” Worthen stated.

Visionary’s advantage is it’s a wireless company that’s getting into fiber, he explained, rather than the other way around.

“We’ve got this really complex skill set that we’ve built over the last 24 years in the FWA arena,” Worthen said, noting Visionary is using FWA tech from companies like Cambium and Tarana.

NTIA has said it plans to release guidance on how states can use alternative, non-fiber technologies, but it hasn’t published anything just yet.

Challenges out west

Nevada’s broadband chief recently told us he thinks the BEAD funding formula “disadvantages” western states. Primarily because these states have large areas of land without a whole lot of density – making broadband deployments more costly.

In Wyoming’s case, Worthen pointed out the state has six people per square mile. Its largest city – Cheyenne – has a population of around 65,000.

States in the west “are in an awkward position, because they have to make their dollars last and achieve as much as possible.”

For its BEAD builds, Visionary anticipates the cost per fiber passing in some cases will be “near 10 times the cost” of its normal spend, Worthen said, though he didn’t disclose the figure.

“That’s why the states have to support a hybrid solution, which I’m really happy about,” he said.