Fort Collins, Colorado’s popular Connexion municipal broadband network has unveiled SmartHome, a new network management app that can help the ISPs customers better manage the security and bandwidth-consumption of their home networks.

SmartHome lets users see every connected device, set parental controls, prioritize bandwidth for work or entertainment, and guard against online threats through integrated security services like ExperienceIQ and ProtectIQ. The expanded new functionality is being bundled with the ISPs Enhanced 2-Gig and Premier 10-Gig plans.

Connexion currently offers locals three tiers of fiber service: a symmetrical 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) option for $70 a month; a symmetrical 2 Gbps option for $100 a month; and a symmetrical 10 Gbps offering for $200 per month.

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Fort Collins, Colorado has repeatedly won awards for being a trailblazer in the municipal fiber space, and local subscribers continue to take notice. The city-owned and operated Connexion network operation just announced it has passed the 20,000 subscriber mark, after nabbing a significant new wave of state and federal funding for expansion early last year.

Fort Collins began thinking about a citywide fiber deployment as early as 2012. By 2015, locals had voted to exempt the city from a counterproductive state law restricting communities from building their own broadband networks.

Two city utility managers, an economist, and a fiber technologist walk into a virtual webinar …

And what followed was a deep dive into why delaying investment in smart city infrastructure is increasingly costly.

The hour-long livestream event  – co-hosted by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) Community Broadband Networks initiative and the American Association for Public Broadband (AAPB) – brought together municipal utility managers, an economist, and a leading fiber technologist to explore how cities can future-proof themselves with digital infrastructure.

Guests who appeared on “Building Smarter Cities and the Cost of Doing Nothing” today emphasized how “smart cities” are built on fiber networks and what city investments in the gold-standard of Internet connectivity can do to boost economic development while improving the quality of life for local residents and businesses.

They highlighted the real costs of inaction, pointing to slower economic growth and lost municipal revenue opportunities as something many cities or towns overlook when thinking about local infrastructure.

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The webinar featured Huntsville Utilities VP of Engineering Stacy Cantrell who provided key insights into the public-private partnership Huntsville Utilities struck with Google Fiber and what it has meant to “Rocket City.”

Another virtual case study was provided by Brieana Reed-Harmel, Broadband Manager for Pulse Fiber, discussing how the city’s fiber network is propelling economic revitalization efforts in Loveland and how the success of the network is now being extended into neighboring communities.

Recent Trump administration changes to a massive federal broadband grant program are lowering standards for broadband access, shifting the focus away from affordability and equity, and potentially redirecting billions of dollars away from future-proof fiber networks toward slower, more expensive satellite options that don’t seem likely to fix U.S. broadband woes.

But states, worried about losing an historic round of broadband grants, may be too intimidated to be up front about the potential downside of changes the Trump administration calls “the benefit of the bargain.”  

That’s the early story coming out of states like Tennessee, Colorado, and Texas, where state leaders are being forced to dramatically revamp billions of dollars in Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant planning.

In all three states the changes have introduced new delays and lowered last mile quality control standards. But an early look at the revamped bidding process in all three states shows that billions of dollars are likely being redirected away from locally-owned fiber networks to billionaire-owned low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellite broadband options insufficient to the task.

Since it first broke ground in 2014, Longmont, Colorado’s city-owned NextLight fiber network has won numerous awards and inspired countless communities nationwide. But the network, which recently expanded access to more than 28,000 area residents, is also trailblazing in another area: ensuring that fiber is affordable to low income, marginalized populations.

NextLight unveiled its locally-funded Internet Assistance Program (IAP) last year. The program provides low-income residents with a $25 discount off of NextLight’s already affordable fiber pricing. As a result, locals can receive symmetrical 100 megabit per second (Mbps) service for as little as $14.95 a month, and symmetrical 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) fiber for $45.

To apply, households must qualify for any of a number of existing federal programs, including the FCC’s Lifeline, Head Start, Medicaid-MSP or SLMP, Veterans or survivor’s pension, Section 8, WIC, food stamps, Federal Pell Grants, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), SVVSD Education Benefit, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), or Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR).

IAP was created to offset the collapse of the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which provided a $30 per month discount off of the broadband bills of low-income Americans. The program was summarily discontinued after Republicans in Congress refused to fund a program extension.

According to Longmont officials, not only is their IAP program available to a much broader qualification base, with more than 1000 subscribers now enrolled, the program is currently helping 14 percent more city subscribers than the FCC’s ACP did at its peak.

Last year, Timnath, Colorado broke ground on a new $20 million fiber network with the goal of dramatically expanding affordable fiber access to the town of 7,100 residents.

*The following story by Broadband Breakfast Reporter Jake Neenan was originally published here.

States are moving ahead with their Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program processes after the Commerce Department extended for 90 days the deadlines for final spending plans.

“In Michigan, we are in the thick of reviewing, scoring, and deconflicting 392 applications that we received in our first grant round,” said Eric Frederick, head of the state’s High-Speed Internet Office. “It’s a very busy time for us.”

He spoke Wednesday on  a Fiber Broadband Association webinar.

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The state received 32 applications to serve more than 78 percent of its 248,000 eligible locations in its first round, which ended April 9 and was restricted to fiber projects. Frederick said the state is planning to start discussing grant agreements with successful round one applicants “within the next month or so.”

Michigan is also planning to release a draft of its BEAD grant agreement, the contract grant winners will ultimately sign with the state, this week for public comment, Frederick said. The state was allocated more than $1.5 billion from the $42.45 billion program.

The Trump administration on Tuesday gave all states a 90-day extension on their deadlines to submit their lists of selected projects for approval, documents that were originally due one year after a state’s initial BEAD implementation proposal was given the federal green light. The National Telecommunications Administration, the Commerce agency handling BEAD, said states could require additional time to submit those proposals in light of forthcoming rule changes.

Since it first broke ground in 2014, Longmont, Colorado’s city-owned NextLight fiber network has won numerous awards and inspired countless communities nationwide.

Now the popular community provider has reached another milestone: it now delivers next-generation affordable fiber access to 28,000 area residents.

The municipal broadband provider also announced that ongoing community support means the city is on track to repay its construction bond by the 2029 due date.

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“NextLight currently passes about 90 percent of the 47,000 premises in Longmont,” NextLight’s Scott Rochat told ILSR. “So at present, we serve about two-thirds of those homes and businesses. We’re delighted to see that so many in the community have chosen to make NextLight their choice for internet service, and we keep welcoming more.”

Last year, Rochat told ILSR the network passed 42,000 premises and was seeing a 64 percent take rate in Longmont.

The network has been so popular locally that officials have pushed the fiber network into neighboring areas, funded exclusively by subscriber revenues and money set aside for capital projects, with no bonding or other supplementary funds involved.

The Boulder, Colorado city council has voted unanimously (9-0) in favor of striking a $9 million deal with Nebraska based ALLO Communications that should ultimately provide fast fiber access to most of the city’s 330,000 residents.

The particulars of the agreement involve ALLO leasing part of the city’s fiber network as part of a 20 year agreement. ALLO will pay Boulder a $1.5 million upfront lease payment and provide the city $2.25 per residential and $9 per business customer per month plus 1.5 percent of revenue from any wholesale lease. The total deal is estimated to be worth $9 million to the city.

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“This achievement stems from a 2018 decision by the City Council to construct a citywide fiber backbone,” city officials said of the deal. “This forward-thinking initiative secured the city's future ability to support various broadband business models, ensuring long-term flexibility and growth in digital infrastructure.”

As per the deal, ALLO will provide broadband service to 80 percent of the city by 2028 and 97 percent of the city by 2030.

ALLO currently provides broadband access to more than 1.2 million customers throughout Colorado, Nebraska, Arizona, and Missouri.

In deployed markets, ALLO offers locals two tiers of fiber service: symmetrical one gigabit per second (1 Gbps) for $98 a month, and symmetrical 2.3 Gbps service for $126 a month.

On the most recent episode of the Connect This! Show, the panel was joined by California-based Internet Exchange builder Matt Peterson of SFMIX. Matt has been in the broadband space for many years on the deployment and operations side of the wholesale and peering system, and joined the show today to talk about the need for better, more practical, more forward-thinking middle mile networks across the United States. However the federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program (BEAD) ultimately ends up, if we want to see more competition and the most efficient use of public dollars there is no doubt that we will need additional infrastructure connecting those last-mile networks that hook up businesses, residents, and community anchor institutions around the country.

These are the networks that connect our networks back to the larger Internet; they traverse county roads and state highway systems. Some are owned by and exclusive to the largest providers, like AT&T. Others, like Project THOR in Colorado, were collectively built to increase resiliency for the public good, as well as stimulate last-mile retail service in underserved and unserved parts of the country. California is in the midst of multi-billion dollar middle mile endeavor, and a handful of others states are likewise making significant investments. 

So the question is: are we building enough middle mile in the United States, and equally importantly, are we building it correctly? With all sorts of public and private interests involved, and networks that are often measured in the thousands of miles (or tens of thousands of route-miles of fiber), often with public money, it's an important thing to get right.

We wanted to underline the importance of these things by featuring this segment of the show. The panel talks about the consequences of decisions about everything from where these networks are built, how they are funded, transparency and marketing, and the importance of talking to the last-mile operators that will be interconnecting with them. 

Watch Christopher Mitchell (ILSR) and Travis Carter (USI Fiber) with regular guests Kim McKinley (UTOPIA Fiber) and Doug Dawson (CCG Consulting), joined by special guest Matt Peterson (SFMIX) talk about it all below. 

The middle-mile discussion starts at the 36:00 mark.

As the federal government makes unprecedented investments to expand high-speed access to the Internet, unbeknownst to most outside the broadband industry is that nearly a third of the states in the U.S. have preemption laws in place that either prevent or restrict local municipalities from building and operating publicly-owned, locally-controlled networks.

Currently, there are 16 states across the U.S. (listed below) with these monopoly-protecting, anti-competition preemption laws in place.

These states maintain these laws, despite the fact that wherever municipal broadband networks or other forms of community-owned networks operate, the service they deliver residents and businesses almost always offers faster connection speeds, more reliable service, and lower prices.

In numerous cases, municipal broadband networks are able to provide low-cost or free service to low-income households even in the absence of the now expired federal Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). And for several years in a row now, municipal networks consistently rank higher in terms of consumer satisfaction and performance in comparison to the big monopoly Internet service providers, as PCMag and Consumer Reports have documented time and time again.

Nevertheless, these preemption laws remain in 16 states, enacted at the behest of Big Cable and Telecom lobbyists, many of whom have ghost written the statutes, in an effort to protect ISP monopolies from competition.

The Infrastructure Law Was Supposed to Move the Preemption Needle But …