Greenlight Networks is a

fiber-optic An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means t ...

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

Rochester, NY Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in Wes ...

and the

Buffalo Niagara Region The Buffalo Niagara Region is an economic region that is part of the Great Lakes region of North America, comprising much of Western New York in the United States. The Regional Institute of the University at Buffalo has defined the region as inc ...

. The company was founded in 2011 and competes with

Frontier Telephone of Rochester Frontier Telephone of Rochester, Inc., formerly Rochester Telephone Corporation, is a local telephone operating company of Frontier Communications providing telephone service to Rochester, New York, Rochester, NY. The company was founded in 1994. ...

, Verizon Fios and

Charter Spectrum Spectrum is a trade name of Charter Communications, used to market consumer and commercial cable television, internet, telephone, and wireless services provided by the company. The brand was first introduced in 2014; prior to that, these serv ...

History

Greenlight was founded in 2011 by Mark Murphy and began offering 1

Gigabit The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communications. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represented a ...

fiber optic An optical fiber, or optical fibre in Commonwealth English, is a flexible, transparent fiber made by drawing glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are used most often as a means to ...

internet service in 2012. The service began mostly confined to areas east of the

Genesee River The Genesee River is a tributary of Lake Ontario flowing northward through the Twin Tiers of Pennsylvania and New York in the United States. The river provided the original power for the Rochester area's 19th century mills and still provides h ...

due to financial constraints with building new fiber optic lines particularity in Rochester's suburbs and getting permission the various towns and from

Rochester Gas and Electric Avangrid, Inc. (formerly Energy East and Iberdrola USA), is an energy services and delivery company. AVANGRID serves about 3.1 million customers throughout New England, Pennsylvania and New York (state), New York in the United States. History In ...

to use their existing poles. In 2018, the company was purchased by local billionaire businessman and philanthropist

Tom Golisano Blase Thomas Golisano (born November 14, 1941) is an American billionaire businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder of Paychex, which offers payroll and human resources services to businesses. Golisano owned Greenlight Networks, a fiber ...

. Following Golisano's purchase of the company it began to rapidly expand across the west side of the market. The company determines where it will expand to by the amount of signups for the service a particular area has. In December 2019, it was announced that Greenlight would be expanding into the

in 2020.

Future expansion

Greenlight’s website suggests the company is looking into future long-term expansion into areas such as Albany,

Binghamton Binghamton () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, and serves as the county seat of Broome County. Surrounded by rolling hills, it lies in the state's Southern Tier region near the Pennsylvania border, in a bowl-shaped valley at the conflue ...

Ithaca Ithaca most commonly refers to: *Homer's Ithaca, an island featured in Homer's ''Odyssey'' *Ithaca (island), an island in Greece, possibly Homer's Ithaca *Ithaca, New York, a city, and home of Cornell University and Ithaca College Ithaca, Ithaka ...

, Syracuse, and the

Finger Lakes The Finger Lakes are a group of eleven long, narrow, roughly north–south lakes located south of Lake Ontario in an area called the ''Finger Lakes region'' in New York, in the United States. This region straddles the northern and transitional ...

Region as well as

Bridgeport Bridgeport is the most populous city and a major port in the U.S. state of Connecticut. With a population of 148,654 in 2020, it is also the fifth-most populous in New England. Located in eastern Fairfield County at the mouth of the Pequonnoc ...

Danbury Danbury is a city in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States, located approximately northeast of New York City. Danbury's population as of 2022 was 87,642. It is the seventh largest city in Connecticut. Danbury is nicknamed the "Hat City ...

Hartford Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since the ...

New Haven New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...

, and Stamford in

Connecticut Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...

References

External links

Official website
{{Internet service providers of the United States Fiber-optic communications Telecommunications companies of the United States Companies based in Rochester, New York Telecommunications companies established in 2011 American companies established in 2011 Communications in New York (state) Internet service providers 2011 establishments in New York (state)