News

Experts express concern that federal support for municipal broadband is limited, prompting uncertainty about future funding and operational sustainability. At a Fiber for Breakfast event Wednesday, Tyler Cooper, editor-in-chief of Broadband Now, said that Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grants are less promising for municipal broadband deployments despite initial promises.

Lancaster, Pennsylvania is in the final steps of shutting down the city’s fledgling municipal broadband network as it pivots to a new public private fiber deployment partnership with Shenandoah Telecommunications Company (Shentel). Late last year city officials announced they’d selected Shentel with an eye on ensuring uniform broadband availability to the city of 57,000.

State broadband officials in Massachusetts have announced over $45 million in grant awards from the state’s Broadband Infrastructure Gap Networks Program with the lion’s share going to Verizon, leaving some local officials scratching their heads. One municipal network received just over $750,000.

This week’s episode features a conversation with Walter Gabino Rendon, Chief Program Officer at the STEM Alliance, who shares insights into the organization's efforts to bridge the digital divide in Westchester County, New York.

Cooperatives and Tennessee municipal broadband projects have nabbed a respectable chunk of Tennessee's latest round of middle and last mile broadband grants. Tennessee’s Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD) recently announced the state had awarded more than $162.7 million in broadband and digital opportunity grants, funded primarily via federal COVID relief legislation.

Recent federal government efforts to expand use of public Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum could be of significant help to municipalities and local communities looking to bridge the digital divide with the increasingly popular wireless technology. For municipalities, the spectrum has already proven to be a valuable way to deploy wireless access to the public, though not all community deployments of CRBS have delivered satisfactory results.

Surf Internet and Newton County, Indiana say they’re expanding a public private partnership (PPP) that will extend gigabit fiber access to 97 percent of the county – or roughly 3,839 Newton County households by the end of this year.

Tomorrow Executive Director of the American Association of Public Broadband Gigi Sohn, along with ILSR's Community Broadband Networks team, will join an emerging network of local digital inclusion champions in San Antonio to delve into what it takes to create an ecosystem for digital opportunity.

With the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) now bankrupt, the City of San Francisco is being honored by the National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Advisors (NATOA) for its Fiber to Housing (FTH) program that offers free high-speed Internet service to affordable housing residents. Built on the back of the city’s municipally-owned fiber optic network, California’s fourth most populous city is well on its way to extending the city's fiber network to 30,000 affordable housing units across the city.

The Colorado legislature has passed several new broadband bills that should aid affordable broadband deployment in the state. The new bills do everything from expanding the leeway the state has in spending broadband funding, to providing some tax breaks to providers heavily invested in rural deployment.

The towns of Somerville and Washington Maine have kickstarted their long-percolating efforts to deliver fiber broadband to both long-neglected rural municipalities. Local officials say that the municipalities’ partner, Axiom Technologies, has begun construction on a dual-town fiber deployment funded by state and federal grants.

One refrain we’ve heard over and over from those in states that have already completed the BEAD challenge process: despite NTIA’s best efforts, it's complicated and hard. The FCC map can step in to help out.

Los Alamos County New Mexico is getting closer to unveiling its finished plan for a county-wide open access fiber network. The effort, should it be approved by county officials in the next few months, should dramatically improve local competition and broadband access quality for the county’s 19,419 residents.

A New York legislator this month introduced new legislation he says would make it easier than ever for New York state municipal broadband projects to thrive. State Senator Jeremy Cooney of Rochester has introduced the Broadband Deployment Assistance Act of 2024 (S9134), which would streamline the permitting process for municipal broadband projects.

In case you missed our second Building for Digital Equity (#B4DE) livestream of the year, focused "Pathways To Affordable Connectivity" in the absence of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), the replay of the entire event is now available, as are the speakers' slides.

The locally owned not-for-profit municipal operation Maple Broadband has completed the first phase of its broadband network and is busy on an expansion. The CUD says it has completed the first phase of its network; laying 143.5 miles of fiber and passing 1,647 homes and businesses in portions of the Vermont towns of Cornwall, Orwell, Shoreham, Whiting, Salisbury, and Middlebury.

By mid June, we will have blown past the halfway mark in the BEAD challenge process - with more than thirty states having completed their “challenge windows” and another handful set to close imminently. But the “challenge window” is only part of the overall challenge process, and there are reasons for communities to stay engaged with the process even after that window closes. Communities - don’t sleep on the rebuttal window!

In the Show Me State, the City of Houston is nearing completion of its municipal fiber network. City officials say its "been one of the best things to come in recent years.” And while the city’s two-man operation is still in its infancy, getting to this point was no small task.

Tune in June 11 for the third and final installment of a new webinar series aimed at local government leaders thinking about building publicly owned networks. Hosted by the American Association for Public Broadband (AAPB) and the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society - both veteran organizations in this space - the event aims to unpack key considerations in the building and operation of community-owned networks.

In partnership with the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society, today ILSR releases a new report examining how the state of Vermont is supercharging its telecommunications infrastructure efforts to reach the unconnected by investing in community broadband-driven efforts.