McMinnville Water and Light (MWL) operates, maintains, and manages the city’s fiber optic network. The network currently has over 25 miles of 144 strand overhead and underground single mode fiber. Twelve strands of fiber are each assigned to the City of McMinnville, the McMinnville School Districts, and MWL for conducting their business.

With present technology, it is estimated that all the information in the Library of Congress could be transmitted over this 144 strand fiber backbone in less than 20 minutes.  Since only one fourth of the fiber is allocated to conducting city business, MWL arranges with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to allow commercial use of the network using excess capacity build into the system.

Currently, we are allowed to lease up to 36 strands of fiber on the main ring to any enterprise desiring a connection. Our business instructions only provide for providing a connection and do not allow MWL to provide service, content or equipment. These functions are provided by ISPs to their customers and our contract is with the ISP to transport their signal. We currently have customers being serviced by Online Northwest and Lightspeed Networks .