January 2026 News
Happy New Year! The team and I are planning for a banner year for Dryden Fiber in 2026. If 2025 was all about preparation, 2026 is all about action. By the end of the year, weather permitting and when everything goes to plan, we will have completed the mainline construction of Dryden Fiber to every parcel in the town of Dryden. This means, over 6,000 parcels; 7,200 households; and over 13,680 residents and businesses will have access to high speed fiberoptic internet. We’re excited to get this work finished and to expanding our home installation team.
We are hiring! We’re looking to add an account manager to our team. If you know someone who loves Dryden, broadband internet, and customer service, please have them check out our Account Manager position online here:
Tompkins County Civil Service - Dryden Fiber - Account Manager
From today through the end of 2026, we will be working on utility pole preparation, including replacements; running hard wire strand between poles; lashing fiberoptic cable to the strand; splicing the hundreds of miles of fiber together; and installing the multi-port units to allow for individual customer connections to the network. The work completed this year will, in many ways, continue to be used throughout town for the next four decades.
In order to divide and conquer the work, we are focusing on three areas. The first is construction and project leadership. The second is finance, accounting, and acquisition of $4M in state funds through reimbursement requirements. The third is in installation preparation, property owner outreach, multiple dwelling unit (MDU) engineering and implementation.
My number one focus is completion of construction. We have awarded one project, “Freeville Expansion” and it is currently underway, bringing service to 900 households stretching from Scofield Road at Peruville Road to McLean and Route 13 at the Cortland County line. It includes most of Bone Plain Road, West Dryden Road, Rt. 38 North from Freeville to Groton, Ed Hill Road, parts of Wood, Caswell, Sheldon Roads; and Meadow, Leisure, Gulf Hill, and Sweetland Road. In the online map (https://www.drydenfiber.com/dryden-fiber-service-areas), these are the yellow parcels.
The next project, titled, “Greater Dryden” covers everything else on the map (orange parcels) and will be awarded this month with a 120 business day construction timeline. With preparation time and inventory acquisition, this 120 day period (approximately 20 business days per month) will run from mid-March to mid-September. During that period, as neighborhoods are completed and tested, we will open up the map for installations.
Our accounting team is focused on the procurement of labor and materials, as well as the collection of invoices and payments to operate the business and acquire state funded reimbursements and the bonds needed to pay for construction.
This leaves open an account management role to work with individual customers, businesses, and property owners. Dryden has hundreds of rental units (single family homes, apartment buildings, mixed use residential and commercial properties, mobile home parks) and we’ve found that each property has its own unique challenges and opportunities to bring fiber from “the street” to each individual unit. The management of each of these projects (currently over 30) requires communication with the tenants; property owners; engineering partners; electronics manufacturers; and our construction, installation, and customer service team. To this degree, we’ve opened up a job position for a full-time account manager, posted at Tompkins County Civil Service: https://www.tompkinscivilservice.org/civilservice/job/1629
“The Account Manager will be the primary relationship builder between Dryden Fiber and our residential, business, and institutional customers. This role combines customer engagement, sales, and community outreach to drive adoption of our services, strengthen customer satisfaction, and ensure Dryden Fiber continues to deliver measurable value to the Town of Dryden and surrounding communities.”
We currently reach over 1,800 homes across the town of Dryden, including 77% of the village of Freeville and 88% of the village of Dryden. We hope to reach 100% of the town by early spring 2027.
The most up to date list of roads where we currently have service are posted on our Map page. https://www.drydenfiber.com/dryden-fiber-service-areas
We hope you have a happy, healthy, and successful 2026 and we look forward to serving you in the year ahead.