Internet competition in every Montana county
56 counties, 467,248 residential locations, counted block by block from the FCC's own filing. The counties with the worst competition scores in Montana are single-cooperative territory, and unlike North Dakota that does not mean they are fibered: 2 of 15 have no fiber gap at all. The one with the best has none in more than half of them.
The finding: the competition score and the fiber gap are different problems here
Our national study ranks Montana 47 of 52 for wired competition: 33.9% of residential locations sit in a census block where at most one wired company reports service. The county view is where you find out what that number is actually made of, and in this state the answer is not the one North Dakota gave.
15 Montana counties score 99.5% or higher, holding 31,632 residential locations. 2 of those 15 have no locations at all in a block without fiber, and gigabit availability across them runs 0.6% to 94.6%.
The last column of the table below names the operator reaching the widest share of each. Across that group they are: 3 Rivers Communications, Blackfoot Telephone Cooperative Inc, Mid-Rivers Communications, Nemont, Range Telephone Cooperative Inc, Triangle Communications. In North Dakota that column was rural cooperatives that had built fiber to everybody in their own territory, which is why the monopoly score there measures territory rather than deprivation. It does not read that way here: only 2 of the 15 are without a fiber gap, and gigabit availability across them starts at 0.6%. Both things the score can mean are present in Montana, and the state figure cannot tell them apart. That is the argument for reading this table rather than the ranking.
So the competition figure here is measuring both, and the counties it is worth acting on are the ones low on the fiber column rather than high on the monopoly column. A block with one company is a monopoly by any definition, and a resident there has no alternative and no competitive pressure on price. Both things are true at once, and a number that cannot tell them apart should say so rather than be quietly averaged into a national ranking.
It inverts in the cities, which is the other half of the point. Silver Bow County has the best competition figure in the state at 8.3%, and 52.6% of its locations are in a block where nobody reports fiber at all. Yellowstone County, the largest by locations, is 13.6% and 57.5%.
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Every Montana county
Sorted by the share of residential locations in a block with at most one wired company, worst first. The first three columns are computed here from the block level filing. Gigabit is the FCC's own county figure, which is the finest grain they publish speed at.
| County | Residential locations | At most one wired company | No fiber in the block | Gigabit available | Widest reaching wired operator |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Madison County | 6,863 | 100.0% | 5.0% | 91.2% | 3 Rivers Communications (96%) |
| Valley County | 4,559 | 100.0% | 27.5% | 56.4% | Nemont (100%) |
| Teton County | 3,355 | 100.0% | 2.9% | 92.7% | 3 Rivers Communications (92%) |
| Mineral County | 2,439 | 100.0% | 97.6% | 0.6% | Blackfoot Telephone Cooperative Inc (100%) |
| Sheridan County | 2,271 | 100.0% | 15.5% | 83.1% | Nemont (100%) |
| Fallon County | 1,647 | 100.0% | 1.8% | 92.1% | Mid-Rivers Communications (99%) |
| Judith Basin County | 1,619 | 100.0% | 0.0% | 18.4% | Triangle Communications (80%) |
| Daniels County | 1,282 | 100.0% | 0.0% | 94.6% | Nemont (100%) |
| Powder River County | 881 | 100.0% | 32.2% | 50.4% | Range Telephone Cooperative Inc (100%) |
| Prairie County | 776 | 100.0% | 0.3% | 90.9% | Mid-Rivers Communications (100%) |
| Garfield County | 544 | 100.0% | 22.6% | 44.7% | Mid-Rivers Communications (96%) |
| Petroleum County | 266 | 100.0% | 11.3% | 57.5% | Mid-Rivers Communications (96%) |
| Wheatland County | 1,295 | 99.8% | 0.1% | 0.6% | Triangle Communications (99%) |
| McCone County | 998 | 99.7% | 8.1% | 65.5% | Mid-Rivers Communications (97%) |
| Musselshell County | 2,837 | 99.5% | 0.2% | 91.2% | Mid-Rivers Communications (99%) |
| Carter County | 788 | 99.1% | 13.2% | 72.1% | Mid-Rivers Communications (79%) |
| Roosevelt County | 4,434 | 98.9% | 17.8% | 72.3% | Nemont (98%) |
| Treasure County | 402 | 98.8% | 73.9% | 16.9% | Range Telephone Cooperative Inc (97%) |
| Fergus County | 5,737 | 98.7% | 50.1% | 16.6% | Mid-Rivers Communications (77%) |
| Sanders County | 6,904 | 98.0% | 21.1% | 74.7% | Fremont Telcom Co. (72%) |
| Meagher County | 1,445 | 97.4% | 0.3% | 0.0% | Triangle Communications (100%) |
| Golden Valley County | 526 | 96.0% | 0.0% | 79.3% | Mid-Rivers Communications (93%) |
| Liberty County | 1,070 | 93.6% | 0.0% | 1.9% | Triangle Communications (91%) |
| Glacier County | 4,423 | 92.9% | 59.0% | 2.8% | Siyeh Communications (54%) |
| Granite County | 2,552 | 87.3% | 5.2% | 81.5% | Fremont Telcom Co. (95%) |
| Chouteau County | 3,352 | 72.8% | 0.3% | 19.6% | Triangle Communications (83%) |
| Broadwater County | 3,204 | 68.8% | 84.0% | 12.9% | Quantum Fiber (62%) |
| Big Horn County | 4,468 | 66.7% | 35.9% | 58.0% | Nemont (41%) |
| Stillwater County | 4,966 | 64.3% | 63.2% | 18.0% | Quantum Fiber (52%) |
| Blaine County | 3,150 | 59.1% | 0.1% | 7.8% | Triangle Communications (100%) |
| Carbon County | 6,649 | 54.2% | 77.9% | 17.6% | Quantum Fiber (81%) |
| Rosebud County | 3,485 | 51.9% | 38.3% | 53.4% | Range Telephone Cooperative Inc (89%) |
| Phillips County | 2,468 | 51.4% | 11.8% | 10.5% | Triangle Communications (84%) |
| Sweet Grass County | 2,182 | 51.3% | 0.1% | 6.9% | Triangle Communications (100%) |
| Pondera County | 2,647 | 51.1% | 11.2% | 65.0% | 3 Rivers Communications (89%) |
| Lincoln County | 11,191 | 48.8% | 19.6% | 65.9% | Ziply Fiber (67%) |
| Beaverhead County | 4,668 | 47.3% | 61.1% | 34.6% | Quantum Fiber (61%) |
| Park County | 8,471 | 45.4% | 96.5% | 2.9% | Quantum Fiber (78%) |
| Powell County | 2,752 | 42.8% | 87.4% | 5.9% | Quantum Fiber (67%) |
| Toole County | 2,270 | 40.2% | 56.7% | 3.0% | 3 Rivers Communications (61%) |
| Jefferson County | 5,188 | 37.2% | 61.7% | 20.8% | Quantum Fiber (84%) |
| Hill County | 7,059 | 37.0% | 54.6% | 5.5% | Quantum Fiber (67%) |
| Lake County | 15,194 | 36.6% | 52.0% | 17.7% | Quantum Fiber (62%) |
| Wibaux County | 608 | 34.7% | 0.2% | 96.2% | Reservation Telephone Cooperative (97%) |
| Ravalli County | 20,610 | 27.8% | 42.0% | 77.1% | Quantum Fiber (88%) |
| Richland County | 5,121 | 27.5% | 53.3% | 36.0% | Mid-Rivers Communications (96%) |
| Dawson County | 4,352 | 24.9% | 69.2% | 21.7% | Mid-Rivers Communications (100%) |
| Cascade County | 31,765 | 22.4% | 56.1% | 36.8% | Quantum Fiber (84%) |
| Gallatin County | 42,165 | 19.2% | 22.3% | 84.7% | Quantum Fiber (88%) |
| Deer Lodge County | 4,686 | 19.2% | 76.2% | 22.7% | Quantum Fiber (82%) |
| Lewis and Clark County | 29,118 | 17.7% | 56.4% | 32.4% | Quantum Fiber (86%) |
| Flathead County | 48,715 | 16.0% | 46.2% | 39.8% | Quantum Fiber (99%) |
| Missoula County | 43,196 | 14.0% | 60.9% | 91.5% | Quantum Fiber (84%) |
| Yellowstone County | 63,108 | 13.6% | 57.5% | 34.7% | Quantum Fiber (90%) |
| Custer County | 4,910 | 12.2% | 90.2% | 6.6% | Mid-Rivers Communications (94%) |
| Silver Bow County | 15,617 | 8.3% | 52.6% | 41.9% | Quantum Fiber (93%) |
The column adds up. These 56 rows sum to 467,248 residential locations, and to 33.9% and 46.9%, which are the figures we publish for Montana on the national study. The county rows and the state row are computed from the same blocks with the same definitions, so they cannot disagree. The build refuses to ship this page if they ever do.
Method, and what these numbers cannot tell you
Source: the FCC Broadband Data Collection, filing period D25, published July 21, 2026, reflecting service as of . Competition figures are computed across every census block in Montana: a location counts toward the first figure when at most one company reports wireline service, meaning fiber, cable or copper, in its block. Fixed wireless and satellite are excluded from that count and stated separately elsewhere on this site.
It is a floor, not an estimate. Coverage is self reported by providers and is known to overstate, so every overstatement moves a location out of the at-most-one group and never into it. The real figure is this one or worse.
Reporting service in a block is not the same as being able to connect a given house. A company that reaches one address on a street counts for the whole block, which is why the fiber gap column can look better than any resident's experience.
The last column is reach, not market share. It names the wired operator reporting service across the largest share of the county's locations, with that share in brackets. It says nothing about how many people buy from them.
License
This page and its table are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Republish it, adapt it, use it commercially, in a newspaper or on a government page, provided you credit WhereFiber and link to this page. The underlying counts are facts from a public federal dataset and nobody can own them; the license covers this write-up and the arrangement of this table.
How to cite this
Horvath, F. (2026). Internet competition in every Montana county: wireline provider counts by census block. WhereFiber. Retrieved from https://wherefiber.com/research/montana-counties/
Want this for another state, or a cut we have not published? Write to contact@wherefiber.com and we will run it.
Related
- The national block level competition study, all 52 states and territories ranked
- Who can actually get gigabit internet in America, where Montana ranks near the top
- Every provider reporting service in Montana