Breaking Down the BEAD NOFO | Join us Tomorrow at 10am ET for a Special Episode of Connect This!

The Arkansas State Broadband Office continues to leverage American Rescue Plan Act funds to drive affordable fiber access into underserved parts of the Natural State. Three funding rounds are winding their way to completion, as fiber connectivity is being made available to rural markets for the first time, with a heavy reliance on local cooperatives.

As digital inclusion advocates look to get their bearings amid an all-out assault on federal broadband funding programs, the upcoming March 13 Building For Digital Equity livestream offers a port in the storm. “Charting the Course: Adapting to Policy Shifts While Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize” promises to bring hundreds of digital inclusion practitioners together to regroup and recalibrate while hearing from those working in the trenches still to adequately address broadband access challenges across the nation.

The Maine Connectivity Authority continues to make steady inroads bridging the state’s long standing digital divide on the back of federal grants and a public private-partnership between Lincoln County and Consolidated Communications. In January, Fidium announced it was beginning construction on the project, which should bring fiber connectivity to 8,300 homes and businesses.

Officials in Carver County Minnesota continue to make great progress expanding affordable fiber access to the county of 111,000 residents, thanks largely to their publicly-owned open access fiber network CarverLink and their partnership with Metronet. With the looming completion of its most recent $10.5 million expansion, CarverLink Fiber Manager Randy Lehs told ISLR they’re getting very close to their ultimate goal: making symmetrical gigabit fiber available to all locations county wide.

Alabama's open-access middle mile network spurs last mile investments and competition. Alabama has already invested over $324 million of federal American Rescue Plan Act funding on middle-mile infrastructure. Of that, $264 million has been earmarked to deploy 5,000 miles of middle-mile infrastructure – reaching all 67 Alabama counties – as part of the Alabama Fiber Network.

New policy brief makes the case for why changes to BEAD fiber preference "would repeat past policy mistakes and waste billions of dollars while delivering subpar Internet access to rural families at much higher prices.” And while the policy brief warns against squandering a “generational investment,” it does not argue that other technologies should not be a part of the mix.