Empower Broadband, a spinoff of Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative (MEC), says it recently passed the 10,000 subscriber milestone and is making major inroads on bringing affordable fiber Internet access to unserved regions of Mecklenburg, Halifax, Charlotte, and Brunswick counties in Southern Virginia.

Empower and MEC representatives welcomed state and local officials and state agency leaders for a celebration ceremony last month in South Boston, where MEC and EMPOWER board of directors President David J. Jones said the 3,000 miles of freshly deployed fiber was “the largest construction initiative this cooperative has ever undertaken.”

Like countless other U.S. electric cooperatives, MEC, created back in 1938, is leveraging generations of experience at rural electrification to extend fiber into rural markets long neglected by regional private telecom monopolies.

“Knowing that our communities desperately needed a high-speed backbone, the board asked the same question that our founders had — if we don’t do it, who will?” Jones told attendees.

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The $154 million network deployment was financed in part through the Virginia Telecommunication Initiative (VATI), which provided a $69.4 million grant in late 2021 to the Southside Planning District Commission and Empower.

MEC and Empower also received a $449,381 grant in May of 2021 to construct 22 miles of fiber and connect 414 units in the Tanglewood Shores area of Bracey, and another $3.35 million grant in 2024 to extend fiber access to an additional 3,983 addresses in Mecklenburg, Halifax, and Brunswick.

At long last, fiber-to-the-home connectivity is coming to Cape Cod.

Gateway Fiber, a Missouri-based Internet service provider already operating in western and central Massachusetts, has announced it has begun network construction in Falmouth and says service will be available to residents and businesses later this year.

It’s a development that, after decades of frustration with high prices for cable service, will bring residential fiber connectivity to the region for the first time, initiated seven years ago by an effort to build a community-owned solution.

While the plan is for Gateway to first offer service in Falmouth, the company also has its sights set on expanding its network into other towns on the Cape — including the towns of Barnstable and Yarmouth, the most populous parts of the peninsula.

For years, Cape residents have complained about the high-priced, spotty service of the Comcast cable monopoly as their only wireline option. Enter Gateway. It represents a watershed moment for the region, as the ISP looks to tap the pent-up demand for the gold-standard of Internet access technologies (fiber) by first targeting Falmouth, home to about 33,000 residents.

The Washington State Broadband Office (WSBO) says it has signed contracts with seven broadband providers, tribes, and municipalities to begin work on a major affordable Internet expansion plan that should deliver $165 million in investment across nearly a dozen rural Washington counties and Tribal territories.

“Broadband isn’t a luxury anymore,” WSBO Director Jordan Arnold said of the expansion plan. “It’s how kids do homework, how small businesses stay open and how families reach a doctor without driving an hour."

"These contracts cement our commitment to bring that access to communities across our state who’ve been left out for far too long.”

Broadlinc, Concept Communications, Declaration Networks Group, Hood Canal Communications, Kitsap Public Utilities District (PUD), Lummi Indian Business Council, and the Spokane Indian Tribe will leverage a combination of $165 million in federal, state, and private funds to connect an estimated 28,452 households to the Internet.

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Most of the impacted areas are rural communities long-neglected by regional dominant telecom monopolies. Contract details indicate that Washington State provided $27.3 million in matched funding to the grantees, who’ll need to conduct National Environmental Protection Act and National Historic Protection Act reviews before construction.

Los Alamos County, New Mexico is inching closer to the launch of its Atomic Fiber county-wide open access fiber network, which aims to dramatically improve affordable Internet access to the county’s 19,400 heavily-rural residents.

Network construction formally began in May, and county officials say they’re hopeful the first customers will come online by the end of the year.

“We have been delayed a bit with getting our Phase 1 construction done, so first customers will likely be December,” Los Alamos County broadband manager Jerry Smith tells ILSR.

The project was first conceived back in 2024, after locals expressed continued aggravation at the high prices, spotty coverage, and slow speeds of regional telecom monopolies. Officials settled on an open access network that will allow private ISPs to compete in layers on top of the county’s publicly-owned infrastructure.

“Although a need for Internet upgrades in Los Alamos County has long been clear, the private sector was unwilling to take the project,” county officials wrote. “In response, the Los Alamos County Council awarded contracts to Bonfire Fiber to design and build a fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) network for $35 million at the November 19, 2024 Council Meeting.”

The $35 million network price tag is being financed via $40 million in New Mexico Gross Receipts Tax (GRT) revenue bonds. County leaders have stated that the 20-year maintenance and operations cost of the network will be around $15.9 million and paid off via subscription revenues.

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Once completed, every last rural county resident will have access to next-generation fiber at speeds and prices much better than what’s available in many dense urban markets.

Open Access Brings Open Competition

A crushing near-miss at the ballot box last year hasn’t stopped the town of Southwick, Massachusetts from chipping away at Comcast’s local monopoly. 

The town is now making progress on a scaled-down pilot project aimed at helping sell locals on the benefits of community-owned-and-operated affordable fiber optics.

After falling just 14 votes shy of the two-thirds majority required to authorize a full $16 million municipal fiber build at Town Meeting (353-204) last year, local officials refused to shelve the project. 

Instead, the Select Board approved a municipal agreement with Westfield Gas & Electric’s Whip City Fiber to construct a targeted pilot network funded entirely by existing money.

The smaller phased deployment aims to prove out subscriber demand, connect vital anchor institutions, and demonstrate that a publicly owned fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network can pay for itself without leaving general taxpayers on the hook.

According to local news outlet The Reminder, this scaled-back pilot project will target three of the original 19 fiberhoods targeted under the original plan to deploy fiber to the entire town of 9,346.

Pilot Cleared for Takeoff

Rather than wait around to convince hesitant voters at another contentious town meeting, Southwick leadership pivoted to what was already sitting in the town’s war chest.

The New Hampshire Electric Cooperative (NHEC) says it has been awarded a $5.58 million federal broadband grant to help expand affordable fiber access to the rural and underserved parts of its service territory in The Granite State.

According to a cooperative announcement, NHEC officials say the New Hampshire Office of Broadband Initiatives has awarded it a $5.58 million grant courtesy of the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, made possible by the 2021 infrastructure bill.

New Hampshire was originally allocated $196.5 million from the BEAD program (which included non-deployment funds), but the federal allocation was later adjusted to $18.6 million after significant unpopular changes by the Trump administration that eliminated affordability requirements and shifted a significant amount of funds from fiber to Elon Musk’s low-earth-orbit satellite venture. (NTIA has not yet released guidance on BEAD non-deployment funds).

NHEC’s $5.58 million chunk of BEAD funding will be used to bring 126 miles of new fiber to 2,500 homes and businesses across 23 rural communities, including Bath, Benton, Clarksville, Colebrook, Danbury, Dixville, Goshen, Grafton, Groton, Haverhill, Hill, Holderness, Lyman, Moultonborough, New Hampton, Orange, Orford, Piermont, Springfield, Thornton, Tuftonboro, Warren, and Wentworth.

Paulding Putnam Electric Cooperative (PPEC) says it has received $13.2 million in federal broadband grant support to help fund a major fiber-to-the-home expansion to rural unserved segments of northeast Indiana.

According to a cooperative announcement, the co-op will receive $13.2 million in BEAD (Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment) federal grant funding from the Indiana Broadband Office, matched by $10.3 million in cooperative investment, to bring affordable fiber to thousands of unserved residents in Allen, Adams, DeKalb and Noble counties.

PPEC’s fiber network passes more than 18,600 locations in Ohio and Indiana, with the cooperative having formally launched its major expansion project last year.

"This investment will make a lasting difference for the communities we serve," PPEC CEO Randy Price said of the grant award. "Reliable, high-speed internet has become a necessity for education, healthcare, agriculture, business, and everyday life. Many of our members have waited far too long for access to dependable broadband. With support from the BEAD program, we're able to accelerate fiber deployment and deliver a long-term solution that will benefit our members and strengthen our communities well into the future.”

In deployed fiber markets, the cooperative offers symmetrical 250 megabit per second (Mbps) fiber for $60 a month; symmetrical 500 Mbps fiber for $80 a month; and symmetrical 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) fiber for $120 a month, with a variety of additional phone, Wi-Fi, and battery-backup add-on options.

The Hoopa Valley Tribe is celebrating the opening of its new fiber network operations center as the Hoopa Valley Public Utilities District (HVPUD) expands fiber-to-the-home Internet service throughout the Hoopa Valley Reservation and into neighboring communities just outside of its Tribal lands.

To mark the occasion earlier this summer, more than 50 community members, Tribal leaders, HVPUD staff, and project partners attended the July 17 opening celebration.

At the celebration, Hoopa Valley Tribal Vice Chairman Jordan Hailey hailed the milestone moment:

“This is truly a great day for the Hoopa Valley Tribe, for the department and for the Hoopa people. It makes me proud as a Hoopa Tribal member and a member of this community to see everything that they’ve accomplished.”

Though the new network operations headquarters is a storage and transport data center, General Manager of HVPUD Linnea Jackson made it clear that it is not a hyperscale/compute AI data center that have sparked controversy and protest in numerous local communities across the nation.

“The (data centers) that are sucking up all those resources — water, land, and energy — those are the AI data centers. Ours is a network hub, not a huge footprint,” Jackson tells ILSR. “We’re talking about servers and rack space for (Tribal) government operations and records, not a demand on our water resources — completely different from a large AI data center.”

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Establishing Data Sovereignty

Three months after town meeting voters in Longmeadow, Massachusetts rejected an $8.6 million proposal to kickstart the construction of a municipal fiber network, Town Councilors in the neighboring town of East Longmeadow moved in a different direction, voting to take control of its digital future and provide its residents and businesses with next-generation Internet access.

The move was formalized earlier this month when East Longmeadow Town Councilors unanimously approved issuing $43.5 million in bonds to finance the construction of a municipally-owned fiber network. 

The vote paves the way for the western Massachusetts town of about 16,000 to finally get the affordable and reliable town-wide Internet connectivity local leaders see as vital for its economic future and improved quality-of-life.

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With pent up frustration of the high cost and unreliable service under the monopoly of Charter Spectrum, the Council also voted to enter into an agreement with Westfield Gas & Electric to build the network, as the municipally-owned fiber provider has done for nearly two dozen other towns in western Massachusetts — with the utility’s subsidiary, Whip City Fiber, to operate as the Internet service provider.

Construction is expected to start in January of 2027 with the first connections lit up for service later that year in the northwest corner of town where the “initially designated (and most dense) neighborhoods” are located.

Six Years in the Making

Oregon’s Coos-Curry Electric Cooperative (CCEC) and its subsidiary Beacon Broadband (BBI) say they have completed the biggest fiber expansion project in the cooperative’s history, dramatically expanding affordable Internet access to thousands of previously unserved rural households in the Southern part of The Beaver State.

Cooperative officials say the six-year, $60 million project was the largest infrastructure investment in the cooperative's 88-year history. 7,000 of the co-op’s 14,000 electrical customers are now subscribed to broadband service after the deployment of 14,000 miles of fiber optic lines that have also streamlined maintenance and monitoring of the electrical grid.

Originally, a CCEC engineering feasibility study estimated the build would cost $45 million, though CCEC’s board later revised the capital budget to $60 million to reflect steeper construction costs due to the rugged, rural coastal terrain.

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To fund the project, the CCEC Board authorized BBI to secure up to $60 million in private borrowing through CoBank.

It was supplemented by several state and federal grants, including a 2020 $14.1 million Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) grant, a $19 million grant from the Oregon Broadband Deployment Program (BDP) to expand high-speed Internet access to over 1,200 addresses in rural Curry and Coos counties, and a $7 million USDA Rural Development grant.