News

Driven by past successes with city-owned fiber and Wi-Fi, Newark New Jersey has announced the city is significantly expanding the availability of $20/month broadband service to numerous Newark Housing Authority (NHA) apartment buildings. A partnership with Adrena leans heavily on Newark Fiber, a 288-strand city-owned fiber network that has been a cornerstone of the city’s efforts to revitalize and assist many lower income – and long neglected – Newark neighborhoods.

Hoopa Valley PUD General Manager Linnea Jackson hailed as Connectivity Champion at 50th Anniversary Gala of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) in Washington D.C.

James (Jim) Baller’s trailblazing career was honored at the 50th Anniversary Gala of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) in Washington D.C. this week where he was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Mark your calendars for the April 30 Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) Rally and upcoming Building for Digital Equity Event focused on Pathways to Affordable Connectivity.

Construction on a new city-owned fiber network in Cabot, Arkansas will soon bring affordable broadband access to every city resident and business in the state’s “Strawberry Capital.” The network comes courtesy of a partnership with Connect2First, the broadband subsidiary of local power company First Electric Cooperative Corporation, which continues to build on its significant presence across Arkansas.

Ruston, Louisiana officials say they’re throwing in the towel, and will be selling a city-owned fiber network that has existed for the better part of 15 years. City officials say they finalized the decision at a city council meeting earlier this month, though they’d already sent out a Request for Proposal (RFP) for potential bidders as early as February.

Colorado River Indian Tribe was among a handful of Tribes that received substantial funding awards from the USDA ReConnect Grant Program, a reminder that Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program is not the be-all-end-all of funding for Tribal broadband.

Advocates for better Internet access are breathing a sigh of relief in New York as the State Assembly nixed a budget bill amendment that would have undermined the state’s municipal broadband grant program.

In a setback to efforts aimed at enhancing broadband access across Wisconsin, the state Senate this week dealt a blow to three key bills aimed at improving various aspects of broadband provision.

Joplin, Missouri has announced a new broadband public-private partnership (PPP) with ALLO Fiber that should help boost competition and lower rates across the city of 52,000. The partnership poses a particular challenge to regional cable giant CableOne, which currently enjoys a monopoly over broadband access across a whopping 83 percent of the city.

As the municipal broadband movement continues to gain momentum, here is a new fact sheet that highlights the dramatic surge in the building of publicly-owned, locally controlled high-speed Internet infrastructure. We also unveil a new map of municipal broadband networks across U.S.

The second Building for Digital Equity (#B4DE) event of the year will focus on what digital equity advocates across the nation are doing to address broadband affordability challenges and delve into the need for creating sustainable solutions for communities.

Photo-filled look at the many days of prep and three days of immersive programming that went into creating Tribal Broadband Bootcamp 11 at RantanenTown Ranch.

The city-owned utility in Chicopee, Massachusetts has adopted the “fiberhood” approach to broadband deployment as it expands affordable access to city residents under the Crossroads Fiber brand. Chicopee Electric Light launched Crossroads Fiber in the summer of 2019 and since then the utility has been expanding access steadily to the rest of the city.

We are set to launch a brand new season that focuses on the frontline work to expand Internet access, address affordability, and help provide the digital skills and devices necessary to fully participate in a digital world. The first episode of 2024 features an insightful conversation with Pierrette Renée Dagg, Director of Research for the MERIT Network in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Westfield City Council votes to approve $11.1 million bond for a new athletic track and field at the local high school, thanks to the success of Westfield Gas & Electric’s broadband subsidiary Whip City Fiber. And though the return on investment may not be as eye-popping as the $2.7 billion Chattanooga's municipal network, EPB Fiber, has reaped in Tennessee, Westfield officials hailed the community investment as a “huge moment” for local residents.

A new $4 million project funded by the Appalachian Regional Commission and the U.S. Economic Development Administration will help bring affordable fiber broadband to long underserved parts of West Virginia. The project primarily targets the rural counties of Randolph and Tucker, long stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide.

The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund was supposed to drive affordable fiber into vast swaths of long-underserved parts of rural America. But the program has been plagued with problems since its inception, putting both current and future broadband funding opportunities at risk. French-owned cable company Altice is the latest to announce it would be defaulting on 18 census block groups in Louisiana.

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. Given that many of these multi-dwelling units (MDUs) were built before the advent of the Internet, a significant number of low-income tenants are living in buildings that are not wired to support reliable broadband connections or where residents can’t afford monopoly provider prices.

Longmont, Colorado’s community-owned NextLight broadband network has now crossed north of Colorado Highway 66, outside of city limits. Longmont officials say this latest expansion is being financed entirely by subscriber revenues and money set aside for capital projects, with no bonding or other supplementary funds involved.