Company Overview
About Underline
Underline Infrastructure is a New York City-based open-access fiber-optic network operator — backed by Ares Management (Infrastructure Opportunities strategy, first digital infrastructure investment from its $4.3 billion fund), FinTech Collective, Revolution's Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, and Emerson Collective — building intelligent fiber-to-the-home networks in partnership with municipalities across the United States as the nation's first intelligent community infrastructure platform. Founded around 2019 by Bob Thompson, Underline designs, finances, constructs, and operates fiber networks that serve as neutral public infrastructure available to multiple competing internet service providers. The company's Phase I deployment in Colorado Springs features a 225-mile fiber network connecting 24,000 homes and 4,000 businesses, with Phase II expansion underway to Fountain, Colorado and Salinas, California. Underline employs 88 people and provides speeds up to 10 Gbps for residential customers and 100 Gbps for enterprise customers.
Business Model & Competitive Advantage
Underline's open-access infrastructure model addresses the broadband monopoly problem that prevents competitive pricing and service innovation in American communities: traditional ISPs (Comcast, Charter, AT&T) build closed proprietary fiber networks where the infrastructure owner and service provider are the same company — creating natural monopolies that face no competition on the network once capital is deployed. Underline's model (building neutral Active Ethernet fiber infrastructure owned separately from internet services, then enabling multiple ISPs, TV providers, telehealth platforms, and other digital service providers to compete over the same physical fiber) replicates the competitive marketplace model that produced competitive pricing in mobile (where T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T all use shared spectrum) — giving Colorado Springs residents a choice of multiple ISPs rather than a single cable incumbent.
Competitive Landscape 2025–2026
In 2025, Underline competes in the community broadband, open-access fiber, and municipal internet infrastructure market with Google Fiber (open-access experiments in Kansas City), Ting Internet (Tucows subsidiary, open-access fiber in select markets), and UTOPIA Fiber (Utah open-access fiber network serving 25+ cities) for municipal partnership agreements, BEAD program funding allocations, and ISP partner recruitment for open-access network deployments. The Ares Management investment (from the $4.3B Infrastructure Opportunities strategy, which previously focused on traditional infrastructure like toll roads and utilities) validates open-access fiber as institutional-grade infrastructure — attracting the patient capital that fiber-to-the-home requires. The Colorado Springs deployment serves as the commercial proof of concept for the open-access model with multiple competing ISPs. The 2025 strategy focuses on geographic expansion to additional communities using BEAD broadband infrastructure funding, recruiting additional ISP partners onto existing Underline networks, and demonstrating the subscriber attachment and ARPU metrics that support institutional infrastructure investment returns.
The Underline Story
Founders
Open Positions
Reddit Discussions
Key Differentiators
Emerging Innovator
Underline is an emerging player bringing innovative solutions to the Telecom & Internet Providers market.
Enterprise Scale
With $4300M in revenue, Underline operates at enterprise scale with proven market validation.
Frequently Asked Questions
AI Visibility Rankings
How Underline performs in AI search results
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