A small Maine town’s broadband network is up. Now it needs more customers.

After years of work, Vienna finally switched on its municipal broadband network. Now it’s telling people to go to the fire station to try it.

The small town in western Kennebec County has only about 600 residents. The Vienna Broadband Authority estimates that it needs 270 customers to reach financial viability. Only 240 of them have signed up so far, so the town is trying to convince more to switch.

“Boy, it’s fast,” Jim Anderberg, the broadband authority’s chair, said.

Vienna is an example of the many Maine cities and towns that are having challenges in the final stages of broadband expansions under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. Many of them started planning their networks only to face competition from incumbent providers that have since mounted expansion plans in their area