This article is part of the Butler Eagle’s continuing coverage of efforts to span gaps in broadband coverage in Butler County. The next article will feature the public-private partnership efforts.

From lengthy cable reels to fleets of utility trucks, the sight of telecommunications crews have become a familiar part of Butler County’s expanding digital landscape.

Buildup of broadband infrastructure has laid the foundation for increased access and faster internet speeds for the county, but it has often prompted questions for property owners as the new cables are run under their lawns or on their streets’ poles.

High-speed internet access in Cranberry Township, for example, is readily available, but some of the projects have caused varying degrees of disruptions.

“Did we hear complaints from residents when the actual construction work was happening? Sure,” said Cranberry Township manager Dan Santoro, who has helped to oversee that work in recent years. “When they’re boring under sidewalks, under roads, under roadways, you’re bound to have some impacts.”

But as a result of that work, customers have multiple options for internet service, including from two of the largest providers: Armstrong and Comcast.

Armstrong, which is headquartered in Butler, has grown into a multi-system operator, providing high-speed internet, streaming and phone service to residents in parts of Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, Ohio and West Virginia.

Meanwhile, Comcast is a multi-billion dollar media corporation that specializes in telecommunications and entertainment. As one of the largest companies in the industry, it services 51.4 million connectivity and platforms customers, including 31.6 million total domestic broadband customers, as of the first quarter of 2025.

Cranberry Township is among the few Butler County municipalities where reliable internet is consistently available. Elsewhere, a combined 1,600 locations are unserved, with the majority of Butler County municipalities reporting at least a handful of gaps, according to the Federal Communications Commission’s Broadband Map.

These unserved locations are concentrated in portions of the Slippery Rock Area and Moniteau School Districts, along with Clinton, Forward, Lancaster, Connoquenessing and Winfield townships.

As a number of upcoming projects aim to expand service and offer upgrades, the work seen in Cranberry Township over past years, is likely to soon be seen elsewhere within Butler County’s bounds.

In past decades, major telecommunications companies would claim territories where they could build out infrastructure. That’s no longer the case, according to Armstrong president Jeffrey Ross.

“Because it’s so expensive to build a cable network, only one company could make financial sense of it,” he said. “It’s the economics that have changed and now multiple companies can build. There’s no restrictions anymore.

“There’s things you have to do, and you can’t just start connecting to the poles out there, but there’s no territories anymore.”

For that reason, a handful of municipalities, including Cranberry Township, have worked to facilitate competition among internet service providers that have a vested interest within the county.

“Most consumers here now have options that they didn’t have previously,” Santoro said. “Yes, that came with a little bit of temporary disruption of tearing up the grass in your front yard and those kinds of things, but for the most part, competition for the consumer and being able to pick your provider is a great thing from a community perspective.”

As a result of that competition, companies have started to offer options based on availability, pricing and service speed.

In June 2023, Comcast began an effort to expand its Xfinity 10G Network to more than 10,000 homes in Cranberry Township.

During that time, the company indicated the effort in Butler County followed an investment of $2.4 billion in Pennsylvania in earlier years and noted that while working in Cranberry Township, broadband expansion work was also underway at four other locations across the state.

The company affirmed that it has not received federal money and has funded 100% of that expansion plan.

“Comcast’s investments in technology and infrastructure, along with our commitment to safety and community partnership, help deliver reliable, high-speed internet for areas with limited options,” said Ricky Frazier Jr., senior vice president of Comcast’s Keystone Region, in a written statement.

More than 97% of homes and businesses across the county have access to high speed internet, according to the Federal Communications Commission National Broadband Map.

That number is higher than surrounding counties, but county officials and companies are still thinking about how to fill the gaps.

Specifically, two public-private partnerships between the county and Armstrong, which already offers its service to 95% of the county, could allow nearly everyone in Butler County access to internet before 2030.

The Accessible Broadband for Children Program already has secured $12.4 million in funding from the Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority for a project that will provide high speed internet access to both Moniteau and Slippery Rock school districts.

That work is expected to be completed by the end of 2026.

Another partnership between the two, called the Butler BEAD Broadband Partnership, aims to cover the remaining gaps in the county. If funded, that effort would be complete by 2030.

While broadband installations in recent years have required fiber to be placed underground, sometimes causing residents’ lawns to be dug up, this trend will be short-lived, according to Ross.

Armstrong began the Network of the Future Initiative in 2018 and has already invested more than $50 million into that project, according to Ross. Numbers provided by the company show more than 1,060 miles of new fiber have been installed since 2020, impacting more than 40,000 homes and businesses.

“We are just forcing the evolution of our network to all fiber optics,” Ross said. “With fiber optics, you can go faster. That’s the main thing that you get from it. It’s future proof in many ways.”

Ross also said that “about 50% of homes in the company’s network have access, but it’ll be 100% in the next few years.”

Once the fiber is installed, future upgrades won’t impact yards. Instead, equipment could be upgraded without digging.

Meanwhile, Comcast is seeking to provide similar options, should it make financial sense.

“As we continue construction in the area, we are continuously looking at opportunities to bring our state-of-the-art products and services to more consumers and businesses where it is geographically and economically feasible to do so,” a statement from Comcast said.

Attempts to reach representatives from Brightspeed were unsuccessful. The company, which was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., took over CenturyLink’s digital subscriber line operations in 2022.

According to a news release from 2024, Brightspeed’s high-speed internet service is available to homes and businesses in more than 160 communities across 20 states, including Pennsylvania.

To address Cranberry Township residents’ concerns, Santoro said the township gathered information from the companies and hired a liaison as a main point of contact.

“We did a series of town halls last year where we did public meetings where we brought in the fiber companies,” he said. “All three of them had representatives, and I actually facilitated a session where all three were up-front and they had a conversation and talked about what their projects were and where they were doing them.”

Now, as the majority of the work has been completed, there’s less impact and more options, Santoro said.

“But I do know there’s a couple of them still working in the township to expand their broadband access in residential plans,” he said.