MIDDLETOWN — Innovative Fiber Optic Solutions LLC will close Wednesday in the latest action downtown on the late local businessman Perry Thatcher’s estate.

Cincinnati Bell Telephone Co. LLC purchased the owner of Butler County’s fiber optic ring infrastructure in a court settlement Nov. 17, said Robert Olding, president of iFiber. Normap Telecommunications LLC and iFiber were both interrelated Thatcher companies in the sense Normap owned the fiber optic ring that provided iFiber’s service.

After purchasing Normap, Cincinnati Bell told Olding that the fiber that provides service to his customers will be cut 30 days from the settlement, about Dec. 15, he said.

Think of it like a highway — Normap is Interstate 75 and iFiber provides the exit ramps. If there’s no interstate, there’s no access to the ramps.

As a result, 200 to 250 iFiber customers will lose Internet service and have to choose an alternate provider, Olding said.

“They win by abusing contracts, they win by buying it,” he said. “This was in my viewpoint a pure path to destroy iFiber.”

Cincinnati Bell officials on Monday could not be reached for comment regarding its decision.

A lawsuit filed for Normap in Franklin County in April 28, 2009, claimed Cincinnati Bell was trespassing on its property, according to court documents. Cincinnati Bell was subcontracted to construct the Butler County fiber optic system by Normap, which owned the system. Cincinnati Bell was accused of “piggybacking” or “overlashing” its own cables, according to court documents.

Founded in August 2001, iFiber was the first graduate of the Dayton Entrepreneur Center. The company was recruited to Middletown for the Butler County Fiber Optic Initiative.

Several properties owned by Thatcher, who died Jan. 28, have been active recently. Properties owned or partly owned by his estate, such as The Manchester Inn and iFiber’s building 2 N. Main St., have been donated or sold to the city for a proposed branch campus of Cincinnati State Technical and Community College.

Loss of iFiber's service will be a blow to economic development, business leaders say

The loss of Innovative Fiber Optic Solutions LLC will impact economic development, availability of service and high-speed Internet prices in Butler County, say local business leaders.

The Middletown-based Internet service provider, known as iFiber, will close Wednesday, said Robert Olding, company president.

The company’s closure is a direct result of the purchase by Cincinnati Bell Telephone Co. of the county’s fiber optic ring, Olding said, because Cincinnati Bell informed iFiber that it will shut off the fiber optic cable that provides its service, he said.

Cincinnati Bell officials on Monday could not be reached for comment regarding its decision.

Adriane Scherrer, founder of We Can-Business Incubator in Middletown, said iFiber’s service was faster than cable or digital subscriber line, a selling point for high-tech companies. iFiber also had a redundant system with a wireless backup.

“The biggest thing is from a business perspective, it’s an economic development opportunity and we just lost a fabulous opportunity,” Scherrer, said. “I certainly never saw this coming.”

iFiber started in Dayton in 2001 in The Entrepreneurs Center to be a competitive metropolitan Ethernet network. It was the first graduate of the Dayton technology business incubator, according to the company. The Middletown office opened in 2002.

It had 23 employees at one point, but is currently down to three, Olding said.

The company is looking to buy fiber back from Cincinnati Bell to continue to provide service, he added. For now, service will be provided until it’s cut off.

“Now there’s no neutral carrier in Butler County, hence be prepared because your prices are going to go up,” Olding said.

Customers received e-mails last week about the closing.

T. Duane Gordon, executive director of The Middletown Community Foundation, said he received an e-mail Nov. 23 from Olding and Chris Scheper, one of the founders of Innovative Fiber, saying the company will close Dec. 1 and the fiber optic infrastructure was sold by the late owner’s estate.

“Which gave us one week notice that we’re losing our Internet service so we’re trying to put up our service with someone else to have as brief an outage as possible,” Gordon said.

Madison Twp. Administrator Todd Farler said an iFiber residential customer in the township asked him about ISP options.

“There are isolated geographic locations that aren’t serviced by companies like Time Warner,” said Farler, adding that some residents use wireless cards, for example, to access the Internet.