Brownsville celebrates first Lit-Fiber customer

The city of Brownsville held a press conference/celebration on Wednesday in honor Lit Fiber-BTX’s first customer, Jay Hicks, a self-described semi-professional stream and content creator on YouTube.

Lit Fiber, the city’s new, high-speed internet network, still under construction, is the result of a partnership between Lit Fiber, the city of Brownsville and the Brownsville Public Utility Board. The city used $19.5 million of its American Rescue Plan Act funding to build 100 miles of below-ground “middle mile” fiber, the backbone of the network that will eventually feed homes and businesses throughout the city.

The initiative, which began under the administration former mayor Trey Mendez, was in response to Brownsville being ranked among the nation’s least-connected cities in 2018 and 2019. Mendez has said that helping make Lit Fiber-BTX a reality was his greatest accomplishment as mayor.

The city leveraged its ARPA investment to attract other capital, including $70 million from Lit Fiber itself and Oak Hill Capital to build out the remainder of the network.

Hicks lives in the downtown area, which gave him access to the first of six fiber “rings” the city has installed. At the press conference, which took place in the new Lit Fiber Demo Center in a former Goodyear tire shop, he presented himself as a satisfied customer.

Hicks said that as a streamer and content creator, reliable, high-speed internet is a must, though he wasn’t necessarily getting that with other internet service providers (ISPs).

“You definitely need that speed with stable connections, because when you’re streaming or gaming a dropped connection is going to cause you a lot of problems,” Hicks said.

When he heard Lit Fiber was coming to town, Hicks jumped on it, he said, noting that the installation was smooth with no issues.

“Seeing that speed test from zero to a (gigabyte) in like half a second, I was surprised,” he said. “Blew my mind. And it has been stable, no drops, ever since. If you are a streamer here in the city or you make videos on YouTube or any type of social media, I say definitely go with Lit Fiber, because you will not be disappointed.”

Brownsville’s first Lit Fiber-BTX customers for high-speed home internet Jay Hicks and Tracy Rocha celebrate with the city of Brownsville on Wednesday, August 7, 2024, at Lit Fiber-BTX Demo Center in downtown Brownsville. (Miguel Roberts/The Brownsville Herald)

Hicks was presented with a gift basket from the city as a token of appreciation.

City Manager Helen Ramirez, taking her turn at the podium, said the new, more affordable network will benefit generations of Brownsville residents and will be essential for their success.

“This is the culmination of many, many years or hard work,” she said. “You’re witnessing history. It’s very rare that you build such a large network in any city anywhere in the world, I would say.”

Ramirez called the public-private partnership that made the network possible a “model for the nation,” noting that the Brownsville City Commission in 2020 identified connectivity as a top priority and “one of the main pillars within an economic development infrastructure.”

The first ring of the fiber network was installed in and around downtown because it’s the mostly densely population part of the city, she said.

Ramirez said Lit Fiber’s business plan includes a promotional $14.99 monthly charge for children who participate in a free-lunch program at school, and for residents 65 years or older on supplemental income.

City Commissioner and Mayor Pro Tem Rose Gowen, who is also a physician, said the “COVID years” revealed Brownsville’s glaring connectivity shortcomings.

“Many patients that I tried to call to do tele-video visits, I could not, because they either didn’t have internet or their internet speed was not fast enough to support the video portion,” she said. “Telemedicine is a necessary option sometimes.”

Noting the affordability aspect, Gowen said that “if we can connect the least fortunate and the least privileged, then we’ve connected everyone that needs to be connected.”

Brownsville’s first Lit Fiber-BTX customers for high-speed home internet Jay Hicks and Tracy Rocha celebrate with the city of Brownsville on Wednesday, August 7, 2024, at Lit Fiber-BTX Demo Center in downtown Brownsville. (Miguel Roberts/The Brownsville Herald)

Ron Frye, Lit Fiber vice president of field operations in Brownsville, provided details on what new residential and business customers can expect after sign-up, depending on whether the fiber connection to the home or business is underground or overhead. For underground customers, the fiber “drop” will be 8 to 10 inches in the ground, which “they cut open like a knife,” he said.

Unlike non-fiber ISPs, customers won’t have to share bandwidth, Frye noted.

“There’s an individual fiber for every customer. … Your bandwidth is your bandwidth,” he said, adding that Lit Fiber’s upload and download speeds are “very much symmetrical.”

“That’s unheard of in a lot of your cable providers or your old telecomm providers,” Frye said.

Once the service is installed, Lit Fiber’s maintenance and support team will be dedicated to solving any problems that arise quickly, he said.

“We want to correct that issue within 24 hours, because we want your experience to be top notch,” he said.

The city said it expects Lit Fiber to be serving more than 10,000 households and businesses by the end of this year.

For more information go to lit-fiber.com/my/btx.

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