The New Mexico Office of Broadband Access and Expansion (OBAE) has awarded $1.4 million in grants to 15 counties, tribal communities, cooperatives, and municipalities for planning, engineering and grant writing to expand broadband access in long-underserved communities.

The funding not only allows these communities to begin analyzing their local connectivity needs in more detail, it potentially opens the door to helping them apply for more than $675 million in BEAD grants the state of New Mexico is poised to receive courtesy of 2021 infrastructure legislation.

The New Mexico Grant Writing, Engineering and Planning Program (GWEP) awards must be used for grant writing, engineering and planning for broadband expansion projects and the development of infrastructure projects. Traditional private ISPs were not eligible.

The first round of awards were announced in June, with a second batch announced in July.

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Round one awardees included $100,000 grants to the Village of Pecos, Valencia County, Pueblo of Isleta, Pueblo of San Ildefonso, Pueblo of Laguna, Pueblo of Jemez, and Otero County, and a $90,000 grant to Luna County.

Central Virginia Electric Cooperative’s (CVEC) Firefly Broadband subsidiary has been awarded a new $12.2 million grant from the state of Virginia. The award will help fund a major update to an already massive effort to extend affordable broadband to vast swaths of rural Virginia.

According to a cooperative announcement, the $12.2 million in Virginia Telecommunication Initiative (VATI) grant funding will be used to help fund a broader $48.6 million partnership with Rappahannock Electric Cooperative, Dominion Energy, and county governments.

These current VATI funds were largely made possible by federal COVID relief legislation passed in 2021. Such ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funding saw fewer overall restrictions and greater flexibility than infrastructure bill funding (BEAD) authorized the same year, resulting in states more quickly doling out funding for emerging broadband deployments.

“The fiber construction project will span approximately two years, covering 603 miles and reaching nearly 6,000 additional eligible locations in the counties of Amherst, Appomattox, Buckingham, Campbell, Fluvanna, Goochland, Greene, Louisa, Madison, and Powhatan,” CVEC said of the plan.

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CVEC and Firefly’s expansion into unserved Virginia comes after the cooperative first finished an ambitious, $130 million plan to install over 4,500 miles of fiber-optic cable across 14 counties, providing broadband internet access to all of its 39,000 members.

Imperial, Lassen, and Plumas Counties are among the first recipients of California’s $2 billion Last Mile Federal Funding Account Grant Program (FFA). The cities of Oakland, Fremont, and San Francisco have also been awarded significant state awards.

The FAA grants are part of California’s ambitious Broadband For All initiative, a $6 billion effort aimed at dramatically boosting broadband competition and access across the Golden State.

All told, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) awarded 11 FFA grants totaling over $86.6 million. Prominent awardees from this first round include publicly-owned broadband projects: the Golden State Connect Authority (GSCA) – a joint-powers broadband authority comprising 40 rural California counties – and Plumas Sierra Telecommunications for projects across Imperial, Lassen, and Plumas Counties.

“These projects will build community-based, future-proof, and equity-focused broadband infrastructure across California,” said CPUC President Alice Reynolds. “The Federal Funding Account – and these projects – are a shining example of our state’s Broadband For All values and objectives.”

As states gear up to administer federal BEAD funds from the bipartisan infrastructure law, a handful of states are already making significant investments in municipal broadband using federal Rescue Plan dollars.

California, Maine, Vermont, and New York have each established grant programs that center municipal broadband projects (mostly fiber builds) – with New York being the most recent state to announce more than $70 million in grant awards through its ConnectALL Municipal Infrastructure Grant Program (MIP).

Courtesy of the U.S. Treasury’s Capital Projects Fund, the awards are part of a $228 million initiative to bring high-quality Internet connectivity and consumer-friendly choice to New York communities long-stranded on the wrong side of the digital divide.

The towns of Dryden and Caroline, New York have been awarded a new $8.9 million broadband grant courtesy of the New York State ConnectALL program. The award will help deliver affordable fiber capable of symmetrical speeds up to 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) to residents of both towns, which until now, had been trapped on the wrong side of the digital divide.

Launched two years ago, Dryden officials have told ISLR they’re making steady inroads on municipally-owned fiber deployment to the town of 14,500. Now they’re looking to expand the popular local broadband network further into the town of nearby Caroline.

According to an announcement by Dryden Fiber, this latest grant award will help fund the construction of over 125 miles of new fiber to reach 2,650 new residences in Dryden and Caroline. The first customers in Caroline are expected to be online sometime within the next twelve months.

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“I find a real partnership between the Town of Dryden, Town of Caroline, and the New York State ConnectALL Office,” Dryden Fiber Executive Director, David Makar says of the award. “Years of hard work and seed planting from elected officials, citizen volunteers, and private partner businesses are now showing up ready to provide top-tier quality broadband service for the residents of Dryden and Caroline.”  

State broadband officials in Massachusetts have announced over $45 million in grant awards from the state’s Broadband Infrastructure Gap Networks Program with the lion’s share going to Verizon to “expand high-speed broadband [I]nternet infrastructure to underserved homes, business, and community anchor institutions across the state.”

State broadband officials say the $45.4 million in grant awards will be coupled with $40 million in matching funds from the awardees to expand broadband access to approximately 2,000 locations in 41 Massachusetts communities.

In 2022, as we previously reported here, Massachusetts was allocated a total of $145 million in federal Rescue Plan dollars to fund the Bay State program. With the state’s first round of funding from the Gap Networks Program awarding $45 million to four applicants, about $100 million is left in the pot for future funding rounds. Massachusetts has yet to receive its $147 million share of federal BEAD funds from the bipartisan infrastructure law, the spending rules for which are much more stringent than the more flexible CPF funding rules.

Surf Internet and Newton County, Indiana say they’re expanding a public private partnership (PPP) that will extend gigabit fiber access to 97 percent of the county – or roughly 3,839 Newton County households by the end of this year.

According to a joint announcement, Surf will contribute $6.6 million to the new endeavor, with the Newton County Economic Development Commission (EDC) contributing $4 million. The expansion should extend the gigabit network to Lake Township, Lake Village, Roselawn, Thayer and several additional rural areas.

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Surf Internet also provides access in Michigan and Illinois. The ISP’s service speeds and pricing can vary greatly by market, but range from symmetrical 50 Mbps (megabit per second) service for $35 a month, to symmetrical 1 Gbps (gigabit per second) service for anywhere from $70 to $80 per month, with no caps, hidden fees, or long-term contracts.

Surf Internet first came to Newton County in 2020, when it launched a $1.7 million project– funded by the FCC E-Rate program – that brought fiber connections to the North Newton School District. In 2023, Surf Internet expanded that fiber network to 382 Newton County homes as part of Indiana’s $81 million Next Level Connections (NLC) Broadband Grant Program.

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.

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.