Today, the American Prospect published an analysis – “A California Democrat Is Trying to Gut the State’s Broadband Watchdog” – authored by our own Sean Gonsalves that examines a recently filed bill in California which aims to “strip telecommunications oversight authority away from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and shift it to a more easily lobbied state legislature and a hypothetical state broadband office that doesn’t yet exist.”

The piece details how the CPUC has become a national model for broadband consumer protection, extracting landmark affordability commitments from the proposed Charter-Cox merger, launching a state-funded broadband subsidy program, and administering the only public loan fund in the nation dedicated exclusively to community-owned Internet networks.

Here's a few excerpts:

“Given what the CPUC has done over the past several years to ensure that every family in California can afford internet access, Boerner’s characterization of her poison pill is enough to make Orwell blush and MAGA operatives smile.”

“To understand what’s really at stake in Boerner’s proposal, it helps to understand what the CPUC has built, mostly behind the scenes, and what would be lost.”

“On telecom issues, the CPUC is not just a passive regulator. In the words of Ernesto Falcon, branch manager of the Communications and Broadband Policy division of the agency’s Public Advocates Office, the CPUC is something closer to ‘a public defender in the regulatory space.’”

“The office employs 22 public servants—attorneys, researchers, and policy specialists—whose sole job is to advocate for California consumers in a regulatory arena dominated by monopoly telecom companies with virtually unlimited resources to influence lawmakers and set the agenda.”

In 2020, former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled an Internet Master Plan that was one of the most ambitious municipal broadband proposals in U.S. history. 

It detailed a $2.1 billion commitment to deploy publicly-owned, open-access fiber across the city’s five boroughs, promising to reshape how the nation's largest city would connect a then-estimated 1.5 million city residents without Internet access.

Then, Mayor Eric Adams came into office and quietly killed it.

Now, with new Mayor Zohran Mamdani – whose entire political brand is built on making essential services affordable to the people who need them most – pursuing a popular affordability agenda that has energized his base and inspired electoral interest far outside the Big Apple, the prospect for a city-wide municipal Internet network is back on the radar.

Last week, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams – a non-voting member of the New York City Council with the right to introduce and co-sponsor legislation – released a detailed “Get Connected” report calling “for the city to deliver high-speed, low-cost citywide municipal Internet service akin to a public utility,” laying the policy groundwork for what at least has the potential to become the Mamdani administration's signature infrastructure initiative.

The Cost of Killing the Master Plan

At a press conference with advocates and tenants at the Grand Street Guild Housing Complex, where NYC Mesh has successfully installed fiber connections, Williams said “in the [I]nternet age, we cannot afford to be disconnected, yet many can’t afford to connect.”

Superior, Wisconsin’s community-owned open access fiber network has gone live in its first two deployment neighborhoods, as the city works toward providing affordable next-generation fiber access to the city’s long under-served community of 26,000.

When we last checked in with Superior back in April, the city was working with Nokia for final configuration and testing before launch. Now, the municipal broadband network says its ConnectSuperior fiber network is live in its first two target neighborhoods in the northern part of the city (see the city’s latest deployment map).

The city’s open access network means that multiple broadband providers can compete over the same shared infrastructure. Historically such a model helps boost competition and drive down costs for both consumers and competitors. That’s already the case in Superior, where the city’s website lists two providers – Advanced Stream and Superion Networks – with more on the way.

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Advanced Stream is offering locals three tiers of service: a symmetrical 300 megabit per second (Mbps) tier for $63 a month; a symmetrical 650 Mbps tier for $75 a month; and a symmetrical one gigabit per second (Gbps) tier for $83 a month.

Superion is offering three tiers of service as well: a symmetrical 300 Mbps tier for $63 a month; a symmetrical 650 Mbps tier for $75 a month; and a symmetrical 1 Gbps tier for $85 a month. Both companies offer phone bundles for a modest additional surcharge.

Innovative digital equity nonprofit DigitalC has been working for years to shore up affordable broadband access in underserved cities like Cleveland, Ohio. 

Now the organization is enjoying new momentum for its plans to expand fixed wireless broadband access in the city thanks to a $500,000 cash infusion from tech giant Google. According to a recent announcement, the donation includes next-generation Fixed Wireless Access (ngFWA) equipment from Tarana, which will allow DigitalC to expand its Canopy home broadband service – which provides symmetrical 100 megabit per second (Mbps) at $18 a month – to even more neighborhoods in Ohio.

The nonprofit just celebrated the connection of its 6,000th household in Cleveland, a city once ranked the worst-connected large city in the U.S. by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA).

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“This meaningful investment from GFiber adds bandwidth to our capacity to scale the Cleveland Model,” DigitalC CEO Joshua Edmonds said of the cash infusion. “This community-based blueprint proves that next-generation technology can be deployed quickly, trusted deeply, and scaled effectively to deliver the superior internet experience more communities deserve.”

The Maine Connectivity Authority (MCA) has chosen Sertex Broadband Solutions to help build and manage a massive portion of the state’s 536-mile Maine Online Optical Statewide Enabling Network (MOOSE Net) middle mile fiber network.

According to the MCA, Sertex will engineer and construct a 450-mile segment of MOOSE NET on the back of a $30 million grant.

The effort is expected to dramatically improve broadband connectivity for 11,000 homes and businesses as well as 200 community anchor institutions, including rural Maine schools, libraries, and healthcare facilities.

The decision comes after the MCA, Maine’s quasi-governmental public agency in charge of broadband expansion and digital equity, issued a request for proposal (RFP) back in late 2024 looking for partners.

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“Maine's low population density and rural geography make it difficult to attract the same investment that other states have seen over the past two decades, “ MCA President Andrew Butcher said. “We are excited to work with Sertex with their proven track record of delivering a network of this scale, and one that is so critical for our State. MOOSE Net will ensure that Maine has the broadband infrastructure that communities and businesses need to thrive and grow.”

In partnership with the Maine Department of Transportation and The University of Maine System, MCA secured a $30 million competitive grant from the National Telecommunications Information Administration's (NTIA) Enabling Middle Mile Broadband Infrastructure Program. The MCA middle mile proposal was one of 32 selected from a pool of more than 260 applications submitted to the NTIA.

Officials in Bountiful, Utah say they’ve completed the city’s $48 million open access fiber network a year ahead of schedule, bringing fast, affordable broadband access to the Salt Lake City suburb of 45,000.

“We have completed the Bountiful City fiber project and built out the entire city with an open access network,” Utopia Fiber Executive Director Roger Timmerman recently said at the Fiber Connect Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. “This was a three-year project, and we completed it nearly a full year ahead of schedule.”

In a unanimous city council vote in the summer of 2023, officials approved $48 million in bonds to fund construction of the city-owned open access fiber network. 

Like UTOPIA’s broader network, the city then leases access out to numerous independent ISPs, creating a massive influx of competitive, affordable last mile fiber access.

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The city of Bountiful owns the network while UTOPIA designed, built and manages the network and takes a share of the revenue.

Thanks to the partnership, locals now have access to 14 different competing broadband providers, offering symmetrical and affordable 250 megabit per second (Mbps), 1 gigabit per second (Gbps), 2.5 Gbps, and 10 Gbps tiers – plus a $38 to $44 local network access charge.

UTOPIA officials say the network currently passes around 16,500 addresses, and they’ve been seeing 200 signups per month.

“We need a year to really answer that question,” Timmerman said when asked for specifics on area adoption rates. “In Bountiful we’re confident we’ll get take rates of 40% or higher. There’s a lot of demand there.”

Syracuse, NY officials say the city’s community-owned broadband network Surge Link continues to dramatically expand two years after the network first launched, bringing affordable broadband access to the city of 145,000 – with a particular eye on helping the city’s disadvantaged.

A recent update from the city states that the network now serves more than 9,200 households in Syracuse, located in central upstate New York. The latest expansion brought the service into the city’s Valley, Skunk City, Washington Square, Northside, Prospect Hill and Hawley-Green neighborhoods in early July.

The Surge Link initiative is part of a broader $15 million investment into fixed-wireless access broadband infrastructure into a city traditionally left underserved by giant regional telecoms.

A lack of competition between dominant regional monopolies Charter (Spectrum) and Verizon has resulted in spotty access, high prices, and slow speeds.

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The lion’s share of Surge Link’s latest expansion was made possible by a $10.8 million grant from the New York State ConnectALL initiative, a multi-layered billion-dollar project to dramatically boost high speed Internet access across the state leveraging a series of new grant programs, education initiatives, broadband mapping improvements, and digital equity proposals.

In early 2023, Dryden, New York, formally launched the town’s municipal broadband network, becoming the first municipality in the state to provide residents with direct access to affordable, publicly owned fiber.

A year and a half later, and the town of 14,500 says they’ve just signed up their 400th subscriber and continue to make steady progress expanding the popular network into rural enclaves in and around Dryden long deemed “unprofitable” by regional telecom monopolies.

Dryden Fiber Executive Director David Makar tells Ithaca-based local news outlet 607 News Now that the first year and a half of operations focused on building the core fiber ring around the city.

They’ve since shifted to the time-consuming task of extending last mile fiber access out to rural unserved and underserved homes in Dryden and nearby Caroline (population 3,321).

“There’s about 500 households between Dryden and Caroline that if they want to get online – it’s dial up modems, like it’s the year 2000,” Makar says. “Since we are very rural…there’s no easy way to get a lot of these houses,” he notes, indicating that the logistics and permissions for rural pole attachments have been unsurprisingly time consuming.

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Makar said there’s about 800 homes currently waiting for access in many of these rural areas.