Infographic: Big Cable v. Grassroots in Community Broadband Referendum

The remote West Texas city of Monahans has spent the last decade taking matters into their own hands and now the city’s 7,500 residents are headed for the right side of the digital divide. The city’s network build is in partnership with Hosted America, which is acting as the first last mile ISP serving residents.

The OaklandConnect project – unanimously approved on May 20 by the Oakland City Council – calls for the construction of a city-owned open access fiber network to expand affordable broadband connectivity to over 33,000 households that city surveys indicate are languishing without home Internet service. Once the East Bay city of 436,000 completes network construction, it would be one of the largest publicly-owned open access networks serving a major metro area in the nation – and may serve as inspiration for other large cities to follow suit with a model that’s been proven to bring affordable local Internet choice in monopoly-dominated markets.

Congressional Republicans are moving forward on a plan to kill a popular Federal Communications Commission (FCC) program providing free Wi-Fi to schoolchildren. Critics of the repeal say it’s a “cruel” effort that will undermine initiatives to bridge the affordability and access gap for families long stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide.

NextLight's locally-funded Internet Assistance Program is currently helping 14 percent more city subscribers than the federal Affordable Connectivity Program did at its peak. At the time the ACP was discontinued, 906 NextLight customers were receiving the federal discount. As of April 2025, NextLight’s own assistance program is helping 1,034 customers – a 14 percent increase in one year.

Construction crews have begun work on Fort Bragg’s long-awaited municipal fiber network, which will ultimately bring affordable fiber to the California city of 7,000. The total cost of the project is estimated to be $17 million. Of that, $10 million will be paid for by a Federal Funding Account (FFA) grant from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC)

Timnath, Colorado's new municipal network has announced they’ve lit up their very first subscriber in partnership with the city of Loveland’s Pulse Fiber municipal broadband network. Inspired by Pulse, the Town of Timnath entered into an intergovernmental revenue-sharing agreement with Loveland’s ISP in August of 2023. Tinmath receives 25 percent of the network’s gross income, with an expected 2 to 6 percent return on capital investment over 20 to 30 years. The network is expected to be paid off in 25 years.