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 2023 Strategic Leadership Plan adopted by the County Council identified that broadband is an “essential service,” stating that a county-owned community broadband network would be a top priority to improve economic vitality of the county.

So last December, the county issued a project request for proposals (RFP), and is currently examining potential partners as well as build and financing options.

County broadband planners tell ILSR they’re hoping to build a county-wide open access fiber network within a budget of $35 million. That network could theoretically pass 10,014 addresses and if open access, could spur meaningful local competition in a predominately rural county where many either don’t have service, or only have access to Comcast cable.

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Los Alamos County Broadband Manager Jerry Smith told ILSR the county is still working its way through the early preparation stages but the project has not been approved by the Los Alamos County Council yet. While planners are currently in the RFP procurement process, the county isn’t yet in position to share more details publicly.

“We are making progress and are now in the final stages of procurement,” Smith said. “We hope to be able to present to our county council a recommended vendor and negotiated contract within the next few months. If we get an approved and funded project, more specific information can be shared at that point.”

In March, Charter Communications tried (and failed) to include a poison bill in New York State’s budget bill that would have hamstrung community broadband. In stark contrast, 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 by "amending the general municipal law, in relation to requiring substantially similar permits for broadband deployment to be processed together at the same time and on an expedited basis."

“With a quicker timeline and more efficient process for local governments, we can create affordable options for New Yorkers that empower them to take control of their digital destiny,” Cooney wrote in an editorial published at Syracuse.com.

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Cooney says he was motivated by a lack of broadband competition in New York State. New York is dominated by Charter Communications, which was almost kicked out of the state in 2019 for poor service and  misleading regulators about broadband deployment conditions affixed to its 2016 purchase of Time Warner Cable.

Vermont’s Communications Union Districts (CUDs), which were the subject of a recently released ILSR report, continue to make steady inroads in delivering high-quality broadband access to long-neglected rural Vermont residents.

That includes locally owned not-for-profit municipal operation Maple Broadband, which has completed the first phase of its broadband network and is busy on an expansion.

Maple Broadband is technically an extension of the Addison County Communications Union District (ACCUD), a coalition of 20 different member towns working collaboratively to bring gigabit-capable fiber to residents long left unserved or underserved by regional telecom giants.

In September of 2021 Maple Broadband announced a public private partnership with Vermont-based Waitsfield and Champlain Valley Telecom (WCVT), to build and operate a district-wide fiber network. The $30 million network is, in part, propped up by ARPA funds and a $9.1 million grant from the Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCBB).

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Three years later and 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.

In the Show Me State – cradled in the center of the Ozarks – Houston, Missouri is the biggest small city in Texas County.

And what local officials have shown its 2,100 or so residents over the last four years is that it can build its own modern telecommunication infrastructure to help spark economic development and offer big city Internet connectivity at affordable rates.

It began with a citizen survey in 2019, asking residents if they would be interested in a municipal broadband service, given the inadequate offerings of the big incumbent providers. Since then – not only has the city built an 18-mile fiber ring for an institutional network (I-net) to connect the city’s facilities – it has built a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network that now covers 95 percent of the 3.6 square-mile county seat.

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“The project started in 2020 and we went live in the spring of 2021,” Randon Brown, Technology Director for the City of Houston Fiber Department, tells ILSR. “Construction of the project has taken approximately four years. (Today) 95 percent of the town (network) is operational and can be serviced.”

The city has spent $3 million of its own money to fund construction of the aerial fiber network, Brown said.

The network passes 1,200 premises with 272 subscribers now getting service from Houston Fiber, “which encompasses a mixture of residential and business customers” – though that number will soon rise to 364 (30 percent take rate) in the near future as more residents and businesses are in the pipeline waiting to be connected, he added.

On a map, the Crenshaw District is a 2.9 square-mile neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles, home to nearly 30,000 mostly black residents.

In the popular imagination, Crenshaw is the backdrop for the Oscar-nominated movie "Boyz In the Hood" – the real life neighborhood that cultivated the likes of former Los Angeles Mayor Thomas Bradley; rappers-turned-actors Ice Cube and Ice T; and the late rapper/entrepreneur Nipsey Hussle.

But on the streets of Crenshaw, a transformative vision is unfolding – an initiative local leaders describe as “a reparative development project.”

The idea is to inspire and empower neighborhood residents with strategic investments rather than displace them through gentrification. The effort is being led by Destination Crenshaw, a nonprofit community organization established in 2017 to celebrate the history and culture of Black Los Angeles.

The most visible part of the vision is to create the largest Black public art project in the nation along Crenshaw Boulevard, the 1.3 mile spine of the neighborhood – or what Destination Crenshaw describes as an “open air museum” centered around “pocket parks” and a “comprehensive streetscape design” that will feature commissioned murals and sculptures from local Black artists.

Yellow Springs, Ohio has been thinking about a city-owned fiber network since 2016, when the municipality issued its first white paper discussing its potential benefits.

Since then, the city has made steady inroads on making those plans a reality, recently culminating in a fiber pilot project currently being used by 100 local homes and businesses.

Launched in 2022, the pilot project currently offers locals two tiers of fiber access: A “standard tier” at a symmetrical 300 megabits per second (Mbps) for $45 a month, and a “premium” tier offering symmetrical gig speed service for $65 a month. There currently are no usage caps, long-term contracts, or installation fees.

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“Final pricing will be determined after the pilot project, and could be higher or lower depending on the ‘take rate,’ customer service offerings, and other knowledge gained from the pilot,” the project FAQ states.

Currently the fiber network covers roughly 600 potential homes around Yellow Springs, and was funded entirely via a $300,000 grant from Broadband Ohio. The city also provides free Wi-Fi via 12 Wi-Fi access points spread throughout the city’s downtown business district.

Like so many U.S. communities, Yellow Springs sees a dearth of meaningful broadband competition, resulting in spotty access, high prices, and substandard service.

Charter Communications (Spectrum) enjoys a monopoly over next-gen broadband access across the majority of the city. Some areas are peppered with sluggish and expensive AT&T DSL.

Community broadband advocates have scored a major victory in Minnesota as state lawmakers there have repealed the state’s preemption laws that prevented cities and towns in the Land of 10,000 Lakes from providing municipal broadband services.

The new legislation, signed into law yesterday by Gov. Tim Walz, took aim at two statutes that sought to protect large monopoly telecommunications providers from competition.

New Law Unwinds Antiquated Statutes

One antiquated law that had been on the books for over a century (Minn. Stat. Ann. § 237.19) allowed municipalities in Minnesota to buy or construct “telephone exchanges” only if they secured a supermajority vote in a local referendum election. Though intended to regulate telephone service, the way the law had been interpreted after the invention of the Internet was to lump broadband in with telephone service thereby imposing that super-majority threshold to the building of broadband networks.

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Another law (Minn. Stat. Ann. § 429.021(19)) gave municipalities the express authority to “improve, construct, extend, and maintain facilities for Internet access” but only if a private provider was not offering service in that municipality.

But this week, with a single omnibus bill (SF 4097), those old preemption laws were repealed by state legislators and signed into law by the Gov. Walz yesterday, officially paving the way for any municipality in the state to have the option of building networks to offer municipal broadband service or partner for the same.

Wilbraham, Massachusetts officials are taking the first steps toward building a city-owned open access fiber network with an eye on boosting local competition and delivering affordable, next-gen broadband access to long-neglected local residents.

Having issued a request for proposal (RFP) earlier this year with the help of EntryPoint Networks, city officials are currently identifying which company they’ll hire to deploy fiber to the city of 14,749.

They say a formal plan to present to voters – as well as a total projected network cost estimate – is expected by October.

“We have no intention of raising taxes or utilizing tax dollars,” Wilbraham Broadband Advisory Committee Chair Tom Newton tells local news outlet The Reminder.

Newton says Wilbraham is hopeful the new network will be primarily financed through an enterprise fund, similar to how the town handles the cost of water and sewer. Depending on take rates, the city is also hopeful the network will be sustainable primarily through subscriber fees. How that all works out in practice remains to be seen.

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Officials are hopeful to keep the total price per household around $60 a month. A project FAQ states the city wants to deliver symmetrical 20 Mbps (megabit per second), 100 Mbps, 250 Mbps, 500 Mbps, and symmetrical 1 Gbps (gigabit per second) service tiers to residents.

With a 3-2 vote along partisan lines, the FCC has restored both net neutrality–and its Title II authority over Internet access providers. It’s just the latest chapter in a multi-decade quest to try and prevent national telecom monopolies from abusing their market power to undermine competitors while nickel and diming American consumers.

“Consumers have made clear to us they do not want their broadband provider cutting sweetheart deals, with fast lanes for some services and slow lanes for others,” FCC boss Jessica Rosenwocel said in a statement.

“They do not want their providers engaging in blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. And if they have problems they expect the Nation’s expert authority on communications to be able to respond,” Rosenwocel added.

Smaller ISPs and municipalities worry that the new rules saddle them with burdensome regulations as a punishment for the sins of much larger companies. But the FCC, state leaders, and consumer groups insist the rules should be a net benefit all the same.

The final rules require that ISPs be transparent about any restrictions on consumer broadband lines. They also prohibit ISPs from extorting content and service companies looking to maintain high-quality performance on telecom networks, and prohibit telecoms from undermining online competition by creating pay-to-play “fast lanes.”

Schoharie County, New York officials have applied for a $30 million New York State ConnectALL grant with the hopes of eventually building a $33 million, county-wide fiber network.

The shape and scope of the network has yet to be determined, but the county hopes to build a network that brings affordable access to the rural, agriculture-heavy county.

“Schoharie County applied for the grant under the NYS MIP program on April 19th, in an attempt to bring high speed broadband access to every premise in the county,” Deputy County Administrator Jim Halios told ILSR.

Notoriously over-optimistic FCC data currently states that Schoharie County enjoys 92 percent broadband coverage county-wide. In reality, broadband access in the county is largely dominated by a monopoly enjoyed by Charter Spectrum, which was nearly kicked out of the state entirely in 2019 for misleading regulators and failing to evenly deploy access.