The company aims to leverage its asset-light approach to scale to more than 20 markets with infrastructure partners and asset owners over the next few years. A big part of its mission is to connect the unconnected. The company’s primary client in New York is NYCHA, with hundreds of homes connected to Flume through the government’s affordable connectivity program. The company has seen rapid post-pandemic growth as many city and apartment building owners look for cheaper high-speed options. A major part of their vision is to accelerate fiber rollout in the remaining 60% of the nation’s homes in a carrier-neutral manner.
The company says that only about 9 percent of households have the option of true fiber-to-the-home, in other words, the entire network connection between your home and the provider’s data center is via fiber.
Flume has developed a compact edge data center that enables it to serve thousands of gigabit customers with the rack space of a data center. They’re using the technology to map and power broadband on unused or “dark” fiber-optic cables in cities across the U.S., bringing home broadband options to homes and apartment buildings at a fraction of the cost. The company claims that most cities have 10-15 unused fibers per residential building. It aims to be the largest fiber-optic ISP in the U.S., still controlling the path of packets from the end consumer to the data center, i.e. not buying or reselling last-mile traffic.
Flume secured $3.5 million in funding late last year, but has now decided to announce a new funding round. Amplo and Hyperplane.vc co-led the round, with participation from the Citi Impact Fund and the New York Fund.
