The summer season is weeks away, and the Town of New Shoreham and Sertex are excited to continue moving forward with construction of the BroadbandBI fiber-to-the-home network. Construction crews arrived on the Island last week and began work to install underground drops that will ultimately deliver fiber cable from the utility poles directly to properties.

We understand that property owners are making preparations for another summer on Block Island and some are eager to know how to best procure Internet and phone services for the season. For the summer of 2021, please continue your existing arrangements with telephone and internet service providers as we work through the phases of this exciting new island-wide broadband project.

Building a new fiber broadband network is a complex process that involves many players in addition to the Town and Sertex. A utility pole permitting process occurs before any fiber cable can be attached to utility poles. Space on poles needs to be identified, and existing cables re-arranged allowing installation of new fiber cables. As part of this permitting process, some poles may need to be replaced. This critical process is outside the control of the Town or Sertex and can take several months to complete. We are also following State environmental permitting processes to ensure the Island’s wetlands are preserved throughout the construction process. These steps are underway; please trust that we have been working as diligently as we can with utility pole representatives and State permitting agencies to deliver broadband as quickly as possible.

The Town and Sertex are refining an updated construction schedule and will share that as soon as it is available.

If you already registered your property, there is nothing further to do until Sertex reaches out to schedule a site survey at your property. You should have received an email confirmation at the time you registered. As the email is an auto-reply, it can sometimes be blocked by Spam filters or firewalls. For those who did not receive a confirmation, please check your Spam folder and mark no-reply@broadbandbi.com as a safe sender to ensure receipt of future correspondence.

If you haven’t already registered your property for a broadband service drop, please register today! Registering will ensure a service drop is constructed to your home during the roll-out of the Town of New Shoreham municipal broadband project happening now. Later requests for outside service drops may come with installation charges.

If you have any broadband-related questions or concerns, please email Sertex Customer Service.

Thank you for your ongoing support.