Antietam Cable Expands Flight Gigabit Service in Hagerstown, Maryland

HAGERSTOWN, MD — Antietam Cable Television, a full-service telecommunications company, announced the expansion of Phase 2 of its Flight Gigabit service to new areas in the city of Hagerstown, MD. With this expansion, the network, called Flight Gigabit, a symmetrical gig fiber service to residences and businesses, will pass over 20 percent of the homes in Washington County. Some of the areas included in this expansion are: Fountainhead, Carroll Heights, Potomac Heights and Longmeadow. This comes only one month after the initial Phase 2 plan was announced to extend Flight Gigabit in the Town of Boonsboro, MD.

Antietam Cable continues its more than 50-year tradition and belief that the city of Hagerstown is a great place to live and work. Flight Gigabit, the first privately funded gigabit network in the State of Maryland, is ultra-high speed Internet for businesses and residences.

Today’s homes and businesses require more access to technology than ever before. “We’re pleased to continue our expansion of Flight Gigabit to new areas of the City of Hagerstown”, said Brian Lynch, President of Antietam Cable. “This continuation of our private investment reflects our excellent partnership with the City of Hagerstown. This expansion sets the stage for added economic development for the region”, added Lynch.

“We are very appreciative that Antietam continues to invest in the City of Hagerstown and we are even more excited that this technology investment fundamentally changes how the City of Hagerstown attracts new residents and businesses. We see this strong public-private partnership paying dividends for our community in the years to come.” said Hagerstown Mayor Robert E. Bruchey II.

Antietam recognizes that Internet access is an indispensable communications tool and resource for businesses and individuals. Communities with ultra-high speed internet, like Flight Gigabit, can access the global economy faster, provide resources for the development of high tech employment options and provide a positive impact on both the social and economic well-being of individuals.

Flight Gigabit Benefits

Flight Gigabit provides many benefits to the community including:

• Fiber to homes and businesses.


• Improvements to the on-line experience for multiple users and devices connected to your network. Multiple users can stream high-definition video content with little or no buffering at the same time.


• Enhances the Wi-Fi experience at home and work.


• No more disconnections or frozen pictures when you video conference either through Facetime or Skype, online gaming.


• Architecture and engineering firms, cyber security, legal, medical, real estate and transportation are just some examples of companies using gigabit service to expand and grow their businesses.


• Stream without buffering, transfer data over the Internet faster than you can write data to a thumb drive.

Flight Gigabit Investment To-Date:
Antietam Cable has invested $6 million of private risk capital on the Flight Gigabit project in Washington County, Maryland. Phase 1 was a $3 million investment in downtown Hagerstown announced in late 2015 and completed in the summer 2016. Phase 2 was a $3 million investment announced in January 2017. One million dollars was dedicated to Flight Gigabit service in the town of Boonsboro. Two million dollars of this investment is the additional expansion of Flight Gigabit in Hagerstown. Flight Gigabit service will be available in all of the economic development zones in Hagerstown.

At the conclusion of Phase 2 later this year, Flight Gigabit will be available to more than 11,000 homes and businesses in Washington County, MD by the end of 2017.

Why This Investment?
Washington County can ultimately only be as economically healthy as the respective health of all its communities. An economically healthy Hagerstown is vital to the region – in 2016 Antietam launched Phase 1 of Flight Gigabit in Hagerstown, the largest community base in Washington County and the 6th largest city in the state. Washington County has an increasing number of businesses that are heavily dependent on high speed Internet at the office and in work from home environments.

Very few communities around the United States offer gigabit service – Washington County is the only county in Maryland to offer a privately funded gigabit Internet service. Gigabit Internet is affirmatively the most meaningful economic development tool for attracting high tech businesses and the skilled employees – boosting the communities tax base.

Antietam is hopeful that with the buildout of Phase 2 the city of Hagerstown, the town of Boonsboro and Washington County will leverage this technological advantage for the collective benefit of everyone in the county.