The city's own fiber — built for the substations, opened in 2012

c. 2006 – 2012

A network the city already owned: Mishawaka's internet-era record begins with a fact more interesting than a franchise: when the city's fiber network opened to business in October 2012, the network was already six years old and already the city's. The trade journal Broadband Communities, reporting the agreement of 30 October 2012, gives the arrangement whole: "The city of Mishawaka has signed an agreement to open its fiber optic network to area businesses. According to the deal, the city will remain owner of the network and St. Joe Valley Metronet Inc. will manage, monitor and maintain it." The network's original purpose was the city's own work — in the magazine's words, "it will continue to serve its original purpose: connecting city and Mishawaka Utilities facilities" — and the capacity had been foreseen: Ken Prince, Mishawaka's city planner, explained that "excess capacity was built into the city's network six years ago when it was installed to provide communications and data services connections between utility substations and city facilities." Installed about 2006 as a utility-and-city plant — the electric substations talking to the buildings that ran them — the fiber was deliberately overbuilt, and the 2012 agreement was the opening of the surplus, not the building of the network.

The county frame, at Mishawaka's size: The manager the city chose was the county's own nonprofit: St. Joe Valley Metronet, formed in 2004 as a public-private partnership — its founding and its South Bend ring belong to the South Bend build's Technology section, and are boundary-printed here at the size Mishawaka's record needs. Its network, Metronet Zing, was the county's open-access dark-fiber system: Metronet offered the infrastructure, and subscribers lit it with their own equipment or chose among competing providers. The Mishawaka agreement "brings significant expansion into Mishawaka, especially on the south and east sides of the city," Metronet's executive director Mary Jan Hedman said when it was signed; the city's sites gained the nonprofit's monitoring and repair support, and the agreement "saves the city of Mishawaka the expense of building its own connection to the carrier hotel at Union Station," the downtown South Bend station where Metronet linked to the national networks. The Mishawaka record thus divides cleanly, and the division is the finding: the county built the system, but the glass in Mishawaka's ground was the city's own, laid for its substations, and what 2012 changed was not ownership but admission — the city's businesses let onto the city's own wires.

Sources:

1. Broadband Communities, "Mishawaka, IN, Fiber Network Now Open to Businesses," 30 October 2012 — the agreement whole: city retains ownership; Metronet to manage, monitor and maintain; the network's original purpose "connecting city and Mishawaka Utilities facilities"; Ken Prince on the excess capacity built in "six years ago when it was installed to provide communications and data services connections between utility substations and city facilities"; Mary Jan Hedman on the expansion "especially on the south and east sides of the city"; the saved expense of a city connection to the Union Station carrier hotel; Metronet Zing and the dark-fiber model described.
2. Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Community Broadband Networks, "Metronet Zing's Dark Fiber Saves Big Bucks in South Bend" (13 September 2013) — St. Joe Valley Metronet formed 2004 out of Project Future's study; the 100-mile network through South Bend, Mishawaka and St. Joseph County; both cities' own fiber networks and conduit as the build's foundation.
3. The banked Technology section of the South Bend build — the Metronet–ChoiceLight record whole (formation 2004, construction from 2006, "Mishawaka opening Oct 2012"), boundary-printed here, not absorbed.