Delivering the Nighttime Sky with Fiber
Most conversations about broadband focus on speed, access, or economic development. This week’s Fiber for Breakfast took a different direction entirely — looking upward instead of outward. Far from the urban centers of Dallas and Austin, in the dark skies of rural Coleman County, Texas, fiber infrastructure is quietly powering something unexpected: a global observatory network connecting thousands of people to space.
In a conversation with Josh Kim, co-founder of Starfront Observatories, live from Fiber Connect 2026 in Orlando, Gary explored how one of the most remote places in Texas became a destination for astronomers, educators, hobbyists, and researchers around the world. The premise sounds almost improbable at first: hundreds of telescopes operating remotely from a tiny rural community with fewer than 8,000 residents spread across nearly 1,300 square miles. But the combination of dark skies, dry weather, and robust fiber connectivity created exactly the environment Starfront needed.
Read the full summary here
Watch the full interview here
