LISCO selected by Knoxville for fiber optic expansion

LISCO Corporation, headquartered in Fairfield, a fiber optic Internet and phone service provider, has signed a contract with the City of Knoxville to enable one Gigabyte high-speed fiber optic Internet access for all City government locations. According to Linda Stallone, vice president of sales and marketing for LISCO, ?The action of the Knoxville City Government will provide a fiber optic backbone to enable connections to the LISCO high-speed network by the downtown business community,? she said.

LISCO was chosen for the project after a year-long search. City Manager Aaron Adams and the Knoxville City Council studied several competitive broadband proposals to arrive at a high-quality affordable solution for the City. According to the terms of the contract, LISCO will lay down an optic fiber ?backbone? which will connect all City government locations. The City?s action will then enable private businesses that operate along the route of the backbone to tie into the optic network.

The Knoxville contract is the most recent for LISCO, which has similar arrangements in Fairfield, Libertyville, Packwood, Ottumwa, Burlington, Ft. Madison and Mt. Pleasant. In all cases the City and/or County government took the initiative to provide fiber optic internet/phone for their own facilities, knowing that area businesses would reap an advantage by tapping into the state-of-the-art service.

Particularly with the growing emphasis on Cloud technology, for businesses, hospitals, schools, etc., all of which require numerous computer workstations with Internet access, the need for high-speed broadband connections is critical to accommodate the increasing internet usage common to modern communications.

LISCO (acronym for Local Internet Service Company) has been recognized statewide for its early adoption of active Ethernet fiber optic technology throughout southeast Iowa.