ROCHESTER, NY (July 29, 2025) — When Mark Murphy founded high-speed fiber-optic internet service Greenlight Networks in 2011, “Everybody thought fiber to the home was a really dumb idea,” he said.
The focus back then, he said, was on building fiber internet service for business customers.
“I would go to these investor conferences, and I couldn’t buy these guys a drink, much less get them to buy me one,” he said.
Greenlight is in most Monroe County towns, work is underway on adding service in the city’s 19th Ward and the village of Spencerport, and a $30 million expansion continues across Greece, Gates, Chili and Hilton, with plans to connect another 12,000 homes by the end of this year.
Greenlight also is expanding this year in Perinton and the village of Fairport, where it expects to connect more than 2,400 homes.
“I think we’ll continue to slug it out where the economics are still compelling and where we see demonstrable demand,” said Murphy, president and CEO, whose local workforce numbers 180 full-time employees and around 260 contractors.
He expects that in three to five years, though, the company’s buildout in this market will be “substantially complete.”
So, Greenlight — which charges a flat $55 fee for a popular 500 megabits-per-second plan — is making moves to get established in other states.
Expansion Plans
In April, it announced $19 million in projects that will bring service to northeastern and south-central Pennsylvania.
In July, it revealed it is acquiring Loop Internet, a Scranton-based provider.
Its biggest project is a $100 million buildout in Baltimore, Maryland, where customers will be connected this fall.
“Baltimore is going to be a tremendously huge market for us,” Murphy said. “There’s probably over 200,000 homes to serve there.”
Occasionally, he’ll see a social media comment along the lines of, “I can’t believe they’re expanding to Baltimore or Scranton or somewhere else, and they’re not done with my neighborhood yet.”
Murphy said he appreciates those comments “because it means people are excited to get our service and still want it.”
But as proud as Greenlight is of its Rochester roots, “If you’re going to continue to grow the business, which ultimately is still good for Rochester … if you’re not expanding outside of this region, then you’re not growing fast enough.”
It’s kind of like Wegmans Food Markets, which has not opened a new store in its hometown since 2008, when the Calkins Road, Henrietta, location opened — and it replaced a nearby Wegmans on East Henrietta Road.
Wegmans is still headquartered in Rochester, but its center of gravity, store-wise, has shifted south.
Murphy envisions a similar path for Greenlight, which offers connection speeds of up to 8 gigabits per second.
“I think Northeast and Mid-Atlantic are two great areas for us to grow in,” he said.
As for strategy: “It’s not that much different than Wegmans, where you have to be good at market selection. You have to be able to build the stores at the right price. And you’ve got to have consistency in terms of the employees that you hire and put in these places.”
Unlike Wegmans, which has no plans to go nationwide, Murphy sees Greenlight expanding beyond the Eastern Seaboard once it gains momentum. That would happen through acquisitions, he said.
Meanwhile, people in the Rochester market who don’t have Greenlight access and would like it can still lobby for it by signing up on Greenlight website (greenlightnetworks.com).
Numerous factors come into play in deciding where to install service, like construction costs and securing access to utility poles.
However, “We still look at sign-ups,” he said. “That’s still very important.”
Originally posted by Democrat and Chronicle, July 30, 2025. Click here to view the original publication on democratandchronicle.com.
About Greenlight Networks.
Greenlight Networks is an ultra-high-speed, broadband service provider, offering residential and small business customers Internet speeds of up to 8 Gigabits per second. Greenlight Networks was founded in 2011 and builds, owns, and operates a fiber-optic network that provides extremely high-speed Internet connections. The company’s high-speed fiber internet network is currently available to more than 225,000 homes and nearly 10,000 small businesses in 35 municipalities in the Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo, Rochester, and Hudson Valley regions of New York, with construction underway in Northeast and South Central Pennsylvania, and Baltimore, Maryland. For more information, visit GreenlightNetworks.com or find it on Facebook.com/GreenlightNetworks, and instagram.com/greenlightnetworks.
