We are Atherton Fiber.
Our mission is to bring fast, reliable and ethical internet service to every community and every customer we serve. That means:
Faster, more reliable internet with fiber-to-fiber connections
Generating local jobs to provide friendly, local customer service
Working with each community to make sure that everyone gets equal access to great internet service
Our story
Like many Atherton residents, our founder Mike Farmwald was frustrated with the poor quality of internet service offered by providers like AT&T and Comcast. The fact that there were no other providers to choose from in his area only made matters worse.
Rather than settle for a substandard internet experience, in 2015 Farmwald and several neighbors created Atherton Fiber, a public/private collaboration that has resulted in a resilient, next-generation fiber network capable of delivering the fastest internet speeds available.
Today, Atherton Fiber is a growing community-driven company serving homes, schools, and public servants in Atherton. And we’ve expanded outside of Atherton to North Fair Oaks, where our team is working hard to get every home connected, regardless of income.
Our business philosophy
As a locally-owned, customer service-focused internet company, our goal is to build fast, reliable internet from the ground up. Our ethos puts the interests of the community and its residents first. We support: municipal fiber initiatives, fair competition, net neutrality, privacy and equitable, and open access for all.
These pillars guide the business decisions we make every day. You have our word that we will never sell your information or usage data, and we minimize data retention so that you can rest easy, knowing that your privacy is being protected.
We believe that standing by these core pillars and providing a real choice to the community we’ll succeed at building a better community and a better internet. Full stop.
Our high speed, low-cost fiber
We are reliably faster than any other internet company within our service area. Our advertised speeds and our actual speeds are equivalent because we offer a fiber-to-fiber connection. This means that you get symmetric upload and download speeds of up to 10 Gbps.
Fiber optic cables have around 10,000 times the usable bandwidth of traditional copper coaxial cables, but your internet connection is only as strong as its weakest link. As you are probably aware, the actual speeds you get with our competitors are not always as advertised. This is often due to the so-called “last mile” bottleneck—that portion of the network that connects the end-user’s home to the broader network. If your modem is connected to your house via a copper coaxial cable, your speed is limited by that coaxial cable, even if it connects to a fiber optic cable elsewhere along the information highway.
With Atherton Fiber, you’ll know that your connection is delivered by state-of-the-art fiber, from the network hub straight to your home. But it’s also a tremendous bargain. And our prices are fully transparent. We incur no fees outside of our listed monthly prices, and we have no contracts, no data caps, and no speed “throttling”.
Additionally, we do not offer bundled deals. With us, you don’t need to read the fine print, because we haven’t got any.
All of this comes as a great relief to our customers who have had bad experiences with our competitors’ opaque pricing plans, hidden fees, cancellation fees, service fees, “accidental” overcharge fees, bundled fees and, of course, those infamously frustrating automated phone trees (and outsourced call centers).
Our commitment to our community
Being locally-owned and operated, naturally Atherton Fiber is invested in – and invests in – the well-being of our community. Our entire team (call center included) is local, and all of them are 100% engaged with providing you with excellent service. They are your neighbors, after all.
With recent global events, it’s been clearer than ever that having good internet service is an essential utility. This is especially true for families with kids in school. The COVID-19 pandemic has thrust students into a new world of virtual learning, but unequal access to high speed internet is still a barrier for many in our community.
That’s why we are partnering with our local schools to “Bridge the Digital Divide”, which provides no-cost 1 Gbps internet connections to students and families that would otherwise be unable to afford it.
