Legislation that would require ISPs operating in Massachusetts to offer qualifying low-income households high-speed Internet service for $15 per month is set to have its first legislative hearing.

The hearing is slated to run from 11 am to 1 pm ET today before the Massachusetts Legislature’s Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy. Committee members will hear testimony on multiple bills, including two companion pieces of legislation known as An Act Preserving Broadband Service for Low-income Consumers – S.2318 (filed by State Sen. Pavel Payano) and H.3527 (filed by State Rep. Rita Mendes).

The proceedings can be viewed here.

Inspired by New York Law

The hearing in Massachusetts comes as similar legislation is being considered by state lawmakers in Vermont and California – all three of which are modeled on New York’s Affordable Broadband Act which, after numerous legal challenges, went into effect in the Empire State in January of this year after the US Supreme Court declined to intervene and overturn a U.S. Appellate Court ruling that upheld the law.

Like the New York law, the bill being proposed in Massachusetts requires ISPs operating in Massachusetts to offer qualifying low-income households high-speed Internet service for $15 per month.

However, the Massachusetts bill set the minimum speed at 100 Megabits per second (Mbps) download to mirror the increased FCC definition for minimum broadband speeds that had been raised from the previous benchmark of 25/3 Mbps, which was the federal standard when the New York law was written.

Baltimore activists and leaders say the city is making steady progress in efforts to bridge the digital divide in the city of 565,000. The efforts have culminated in several grant-fueled initiatives to deliver fiber and wireless to city apartment complexes, a city middle-mile network, and a looming partnership with regional providers to further expand affordable access.

When we last checked in with Baltimore, the city had just doled out $2 million of its American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding to bring fiber to 12 new city apartment buildings. The deployment is in partnership with Waves, a nonprofit formerly known as Project Waves.

Waves was first launched in 2018 in direct response to the Trump FCC’s repeal of net neutrality and the general failures of federal telecom policy to address digital inequity. Project Waves (profiled by ILSR in 2023) initially used Point-to-Multipoint wireless connectivity to deliver free wireless broadband service to about 300 multi-dwelling unit (MDU) residents.

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Now Baltimore Director of Broadband and Digital Equity Kenya Asli tells Government Technology the city is putting the finishing touches on a Request for Proposal (RFP) to strike a new public-private-partnership with an as-yet-unselected broadband provider. The deal should further expand fiber access to unserved and underserved parts of the city.

“Folks want more options, and so we are bringing in more options,” Asli said.

The City of Baltimore is using $2 million of its American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding to bring fiber to 12 new city apartment buildings. It’s the latest effort in the city’s attempt to bridge the digital divide and bring affordable Internet access to long-marginalized communities.

According to the formal announcement from the Baltimore Mayor’s Office, Mayor Brandon Scott and the Baltimore Office of Broadband and Digital Equity (OBDE) have awarded the $2 million grant to Waves, a nonprofit formerly known as Project Waves.

“This grant program is more than just wires and signals – it’s about unlocking opportunity,” Scott said of the announcement. “By partnering with Waves, we’re ensuring residents with the greatest need have a chance to learn, connect, and build a better future for themselves and their families.”

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Waves was first launched in 2018 in direct response to the Trump FCC’s repeal of net neutrality and the general failures of federal telecom policy to address digital inequity. Project Waves (profiled by ILSR last year) initially used Point-to-Multipoint wireless connectivity to deliver free wireless broadband service to about 300 multi-dwelling unit (MDU) residents.

In the last few years, the organization has shifted to Hybrid Fiber Coaxial connectivity to provide more reliable connectivity by running fiber to the buildings and leveraging the existing wiring in the multi-dwelling units it serves, providing access to more than 1,000 local Baltimore residents, at no cost to residents.

Montgomery County Maryland has been awarded the “Best Municipal or Public Connectivity Program,” honored as a 2024 Broadband Nation Award winner for its ongoing efforts to expand affordable broadband access and help bridge the digital divide.

Montgomery County has worked extensively for years to connect municipal services and key anchor institutions, but more recently has begun leveraging that infrastructure to expand access to the most vulnerable. The county’s efforts have two key components:

FiberNet is a 650-mile municipal fiber communication network that provides broadband services to 558 County, State, municipal, educational, and anchor institutions.

MoCoNet is the County’s residential broadband network that provides free 300/300 megabit per second (Mbps) Internet service for residents at affordable housing locations. Originally providing a symmetrical 100 Mbps service, the network was recently upgraded to 300 Mbps, and is currently available to low-income housing communities.

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Montgomery Connects Program Director Mitsuko Herrera tells ILSR that the county just received a $10 million grant from the State of Maryland to expand FiberNet and MoCoNet’s free 300 Mbps offering to 1,547 low-income and affordable housing units at seven properties operated by the County’s Housing Opportunities Commission.

The county’s also in the middle of upgrading its core fiber infrastructure to deliver significantly faster overall speeds.  

Choptank Electric Cooperative says the Denton, Maryland-based co-op is making significant progress on efforts to deliver fiber access to largely underserved residents of the Old Line State.

In 2021, Choptank decided to begin extending residential fiber broadband service to the cooperative’s 56,000 residential, commercial, and industrial metered accounts scattered across nine counties on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Since that promise, the cooperative says it has passed more than 13,000 locations statewide.

In a meeting with Worcester County Commissioners in early September, Choptank officials stated they’ve delivered fiber to 1,112 locations in Worcester County and have 471 currently active subscribers. Just about 42 percent of county residents that have access to Choptank’s fiber offerings have subscribed. The cooperative has received roughly $1 million in county funds.

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Choptank provides residential customers three tiers of fiber service: symmetrical 100 megabit per second (Mbps) fiber for $85 a month; symmetrical 450 Mbps service for $100 a month; symmetrical 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) service for $140 a month; and symmetrical 2.5 Gbps service for $280 a month.

Massachusetts and New York officials hope to entice affordable housing property owners with new grant programs that would pay the retrofitting costs to expand high-speed Internet connectivity into decades-old affordable housing developments.

The programs aim to focus on the multitude of multi-dwelling units (MDUs) in those states, particularly housing developments built before the advent of the Internet.

With property owners and Internet service providers (ISPs) often reluctant to pay the costs of getting these buildings up to broadband speed, Massachusetts and New York have launched initiatives – using a portion of their federal broadband funds – to chip away at the digital divide in housing developments where a significant number of tenants live in buildings not wired to support reliable broadband or where the service is not affordable, thanks to agreements with monopoly providers.

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New York Bytes Into Broadband Affordability

In December, New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s office announced the state’s ConnectALL Office (CAO) was setting aside $100 million New York State received from the federal Capital Projects Fund (courtesy of the American Rescue Plan Act) to bring broadband connectivity to 100,000 affordable housing units across the Empire State.

In announcing New York's Affordable Housing Connectivity Program, Hochul said:

“With work, school, and essential government services going digital, affordable homes need affordable, reliable broadband, and this funding will help bolster our efforts to build housing equipped with the basic tools that New Yorkers need to succeed.”

Maryland officials have announced that the state is doling out $92 million in new broadband grants to expand access to affordable broadband. The latest round of funding was made possible via the Connect Maryland Network Infrastructure Grant Program, and will help expand broadband access to 14,500 unserved locations statewide.  

According to a state press release, this latest round of funds should help fund portions of 35 different projects scattered around the state. A full breakdown of award winners indicates that while Comcast and Verizon secured $14.4 million and $11 million respectively in new funding, smaller ISPs and cooperatives were, unlike in many states, well represented.

Quantum Telecommunications, a smaller local ISP founded in 1995, was slated to receive $15.3 million in funding to connect 1,693 locations to broadband. Choptank Electric Cooperative, first founded in 1938, was among the biggest award winners, receiving $16 million to deliver broadband to 1,693 locations currently lacking broadband access.