Canada’s biggest telecom giant has acquired Ziply Fiber – and a sizable swath of municipal operation agreements for open access fiber scattered across the Pacific Northwest. Bell Canada and Ziply’s joint announcement indicates that the full deal will be around $5 billion Canadian, plus an additional $2 billion in acquired debt.

The acquisition could help accelerate Ziply’s planned expansion across the Pacific Northwest, where the company’s fiber network currently passes 1.3 million locations across Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington State.

At the same time, Bell Canada’s history of anti-competitive behavior could herald a culture shift at the ascending provider. Ziply and Bell Canada’s rapid-fire acquisition of smaller providers across the Pacific Northwest could also risk undermining the pro-competitive benefits of the kind of open access policies Ziply previously embraced.

Image

Ziply was formed when WaveDivision Capital purchased Frontier Communications’ Pacific Northwest operations in 2020. It has quickly become a major player across the four states thanks in part to numerous public private partnerships with municipalities, and a 2022 announcement of $450 million in new private sector funding.

In September we released our updated map pinpointing the location of the 400 municipally owned Internet service providers now serving almost 800 communities across the United States.

Today, we unveil our predictive map which was created by our Senior GIS Analyst Christine Parker.

The map provides a multi-layered look into the near future of community broadband networks.

It not only shows where existing community-owned fiber networks are located but also highlights how those networks will expand in the coming years based on formally announced plans and secured funding to complete network builds.

A few things to note about the map (below at bottom):

• The map only shows community-owned fiber networks.

   

• The darkest shaded layers show the footprint that is already built representing data from the FCC's Broadband Data Collection.

   

• Lighter shaded layers show the footprint that has not been built yet but where federal funding has been secured to expand, based on the FCC’s Broadband Funding Map.

   

Though Northampton, Massachusetts residents still broadly support the construction of a city-owned municipal fiber broadband network, city officials are celebrating the arrival of Gateway Fiber, which will soon be delivering a more affordable fiber option, and more broadband competition, to the traditionally underserved city.

Gateway Fiber recently unveiled plans to deliver multi-gigabit speeds to large swaths of the city. The company, which will finance the entirety of the build, says it’s already invested $3 million in the project so far.

It’s a welcome arrival for a city that’s been frustrated by substandard service provided by regional telecom monopolies, and flirting with the idea of its own municipal broadband network for the better part of the last decade. Some of the city’s efforts on this front have made it easier for providers like Gateway to serve the city of 29,000.

Image

“While we don’t have a final cost estimate for the project, it will be a multi-million-dollar investment that will benefit both residents and small businesses in the Northampton area,” Gateway Fiber representative David Workman tells ILSR. “The project is 100 percent funded by Gateway Fiber, and we are also exploring grant opportunities that can be used to address digital equity.”

A recent U.S. News And World Report survey of U.S. broadband subscribers shows that Americans are increasingly paying more money for broadband access.

The survey also indicates broad public support for the recently defunded Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), and other government-backed efforts to cap soaring broadband subscription costs.

The organization surveyed 2,500 adults from the country’s five most populous states; 500 broadband subscribers each in California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Not too surprisingly, the survey found that consumers consistently are paying more for broadband than the advertised price, either thanks to steady rate hikes, or the broad use of often sneaky, hidden fees to jack up the advertised cost of service.

Image

Most Americans remain trapped under a monopoly or duopoly for next-generation broadband (broadband defined as faster than 100/20 megabits per second, or Mbps) access. This lack of competition results in high prices, slow speeds, spotty access, substandard customer service, and an increased occurrence of net neutrality, privacy, or other anti-consumer violations.

The survey found the average U.S. subscriber bill at sign up is now $81 – up from the $77 average monthly price seen in the outlet’s April 2024 survey report. But the average broadband subscription cost when the bill actually arrives was now $98 per month; up from $89 just six months earlier. For most, $100 broadband access is right around the corner.

Now that the election has been settled, many in the broadband space are wondering what, if anything, will change with the incoming Trump administration.

Of course no one has a crystal ball, but there are a number of telecommunication policy developments we will be tracking, which include numerous fronts where there will likely be changes.

What those changes will be exactly will only become apparent sometime next year.

BEAD and DEA

The BEAD (Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment) program and Digital Equity Act (DEA) programs are at the center of the universe in the national effort to ensure everyone has high-speed access to the Internet.

Image

However, in the run-up to the election, GOP leaders were highly critical of the BEAD program, saying it was taking too long to dispense funds to build new networks, questioned the NTIA favoring the building of fiber networks, and criticized aspects of the effort they consider to be a waste of taxpayer dollars.

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 …

Placerville, California will soon be a place with a municipally-owned open-access fiber network as the city of 10,000 looks to provide its residents and businesses with local choice and more affordable broadband service.

The years-long effort was launched after frustration with what the city’s 2021 Broadband Master Plan described as the “equivalent of an ISP (Comcast) Monopoly.”

“Because of this,” the plan noted, “residents and businesses in Placerville are exposed to the common limitations of monopolies” – a high-priced reality that prompted 98 percent of city survey respondents to say “yes” to a municipally-owned network.

Now, three years after that report was published – and thanks to a $20.1 million award from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Last Mile Federal Funding Account (FFA) grant program – a city that was once nicknamed “Hangtown” is now set to cut the noose of the ISP monopoly.

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.

Image

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.  

Among the burgeoning number of Tribal networks being built across Indian Country, a new fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network spanning the Southern Ute Indian Reservation is unique.

When service was lit up in Ignacio, Colorado in May, the network became the only open access network owned by a Tribal government, providing its residents with a choice between two different Internet Service Providers (ISP) offering lightning-fast connection speeds.

Five years in the making, the Southern Ute network is not only the first Tribally-owned open access network, it is also among the first of the new fiber projects funded by the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (TBCP) to start offering services.

Image

With a strong commitment from Tribal leadership, savvy decision-making, and strategic vision, the Tribe has been able to fundamentally reshape the broadband market in its region, increasing speeds and competition while lowering prices.

Slow Speeds and High Prices Fuel Mission to ‘Bust That Monopoly’

As with many other Tribally-owned networks, the Southern Ute Indian Tribe’s broadband journey began with a recognition that the existing telecommunications infrastructure on the Reservation simply could not meet the needs of the modern moment.

Tribal Council Chairman Melvin J. Baker tells ILSR that many in Tribal leadership “realized we’ve needed it for quite some time.”

Frustrated by years of substandard broadband service from regional telecom monopolies, Kendall County, Illinois residents have joined the growing chorus of Americans that are tackling the problem head on by building their own better, faster, more affordable fiber networks.

The Kendall County network, part of a public-private partnership (PPP or P3) with Pivot-Tech, is being funded by a tax-free revenue bond.

Kendall County officials tell ILSR that the full cost of the network, which will include private investment from Pivot-Tech, is expected to ultimately be $67 million, serving more than 13,000 locations county wide.

Image

The first phase of the network build will consist of a combination of fixed wireless and fiber last and middle middle connectivity, supported by $15 million in state broadband grants made possible by 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) legislation. Construction is slated to begin this fall, and officials say the county will own the finished network.  

“The network is a combination of fiber and fixed wireless, with the goal to serve as many customers by fiber as possible,” Kendall County Administrator Christina Burns told ILSR. “The fixed wireless access count planned in phase one will be approximately 1,900. The remainder will be fiber to the premises.”

County officials are still finalizing the selection of a consumer-facing ISP.

“We have identified an ISP and are working through the details,” Burns said. “We do still plan for the network to be open access, hoping to bring more ISPs on in the future.”

Like so many communities we cover, the county’s foray into community broadband was forged by decades of local frustration with limited local broadband competition, high prices, and patchy service, which was painfully highlighted during COVID lockdowns.