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Montgomery County Maryland Recognized For Broadband Equity Efforts
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.
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.
Resilient Networks, BEAD Hypocrisy, and the 2024 Election | Episode 100 of the Connect This! Show
Catch the latest episode of the Connect This! Show, with co-host Christopher Mitchell (ILSR) joined by regular guests Kim McKinley (UTOPIA Fiber) and Doug Dawson (CCG Consulting) and special guests Gigi Sohn (American Association for Public Broadband) and Blair Levin (New Street Research) to celebrate 100 episodes of the show. Topics include:
- A new survey showing average broadband pricing hitting more than $100/month for the first time in some states
- Communications networks in the wake of Hurricane Helene
- The hypocrisy of attacks on BEAD by a certain segment of lawmakers and regulators
- T-Mobile getting in some hot water after reneging on its lifetime price lock for subscribers
- What we can expect from the aftermath of the 2024 election.
Join us live on October 24, at 2pm ET or listen afterwards wherever you get your podcasts.
Email us at broadband@communitynets.org with feedback and ideas for the show.
Subscribe to the show using this feed or find it on the Connect This! page, and watch on LinkedIn, on YouTube Live, on Facebook live, or below.
Washington DC Earmarks $61.3 Million In Rescue Plan Funds For Broadband, Community Improvements
Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser has announced that the District is poised to use $61.3 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to “support the construction of community facilities” and expand affordable broadband to underserved communities.
Though details are scant, according to the District’s announcement, the funding received from the Treasury Department will be used to drive improvements for the District’s Southeast Library, the Shaw Library, Library Community Business Centers, the Anacostia Recreation Center, and the Ward 8 Senior Wellness Center. District leaders say they’re also eyeing as-yet-undefined improvements to affordable broadband access across the city of 689,000.
Rescue Plan recipients are facing an end-of-year deadline to both budget and obligate (contract) the federal funding for use or risk losing the funds entirely.
“The Biden-Harris Administration is making progress across the country to ensure Americans have access to the services and facilities that help them lead healthy lives and access economic opportunity,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said of the funding.
“These resources will deliver critical upgrades at community facilities for residents, particularly students and seniors, that provide essential services like high-speed Internet, financial literacy, and early learning opportunities.”
Convergence is Here | Episode 99.3 of the Connect This! Show
Join us Thursday, September 12th at 2pm ET for the latest episode of the Connect This! Show. Co-hosts Christopher Mitchell (ILSR) and Travis Carter (USI Fiber) will be joined by regular guests Kim McKinley (UTOPIA Fiber) and Doug Dawson (CCG Consulting) to talk about Verizon buying Frontier, AT&T working with Gigapower on open access efforts, Charter still not deploying CBRS, and more.
Email us at broadband@communitynets.org with feedback and ideas for the show.
Subscribe to the show using this feed or find it on the Connect This! page, and watch on LinkedIn, on YouTube Live, on Facebook live, or below.
Massachusetts’ Gap Networks Program Awards Verizon $37 million; One Muni Network Gets $750K
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.
CBRS Spectrum: A Potential Boon To Community Broadband
Recent federal government efforts to expand use of public Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum could be of significant help to municipalities and local communities looking to bridge the digital divide with the increasingly popular wireless technology.
CBRS spectrum refers to 150 MHz of spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band. In 2015, the FCC adopted rules for shared commercial use of the band, creating a three-tiered structure to avoid interference with military radar during collaborative use of the spectrum.
For municipalities, the spectrum has already proven to be a valuable way to deploy wireless access to the public. In Syracuse, New York, the city last fall launched a new public wireless network on the back of CRBS. In Longmont, Colorado, the St. Vrain Valley School District used CBRS to build a private LTE network connecting 4,000 students in partnership with NextLight, which operates Longmont's city-owned municipal fiber network.
Not all community deployments of CRBS have delivered satisfactory results for municipalities, however. The STEM Alliance in Westchester County, New York retired their efforts to deploy a CBRS network in Yonkers after they struggled with urban capacity constraints and low usage.
New York State Is Trying To Make It Easier For Municipal Broadband To Succeed
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.
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.
Net Neutrality Is Really A Debate Over Monopoly Power
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.”
Pennsylvania Snubs Community Broadband, Small ISPs In Latest Broadband Grant Round
Telecom monopolies have hoovered up the lion’s share of $214 million recently doled out by the Pennsylvania state Broadband Infrastructure Program (BIP), with cooperatives, smaller ISPs, and community-owned networks left largely out in the cold.
It’s not a surprising move for a state long considered politically hostile to community-owned and operated broadband networks, though industry experts say this latest round of awards was particularly egregious when it comes to dodgy politics and its total lack of any real transparency.
According to an announcement by the Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority (PBDA), this $204 million in Broadband Infrastructure Program (BIP) grant awards will help fund 53 projects in 42 counties across Pennsylvania, connecting 40,000 homes and businesses, bringing high-speed Internet to over 100,000 Pennsylvanians.
The awards were funded with the state’s Capital Projects Fund allocation. After matching funds by winning bidders are included, the total broadband investment is expected to exceed $407 million. A complete breakdown of all grant award winners can be found here.
Verizon was the biggest grant award winner, nabbing $78.3 million. Other big grant award winners were Comcast ($61.7 million), Windstream ($12 million) Frontier ($3.5 million) and Brightspeed ($782,000). A few small private ISPs also won awards including Adams Cable ($387,969) Upward Broadband ($1,476,288) and Alleghenies Broadband ($1,809,524).
As ACP Collapses, Newark Takes The Lead On Affordable Access
Newark, New Jersey is taking full advantage of its city-owned fiber network to expand affordable broadband access – with a particular eye on helping the city’s least fortunate.
Driven by past successes with city-owned fiber and Wi-Fi, Newark has announced the city is significantly expanding the availability of $20/month broadband service to numerous Newark Housing Authority (NHA) apartment buildings.
This latest partnership with Adrena leans heavily on Newark Fiber, a 288-strand city-owned fiber network. Launched in 2016, the network has steadily been expanded to connect anchor institutions. But it’s also been a cornerstone of the city’s efforts to revitalize and assist many lower income – and long neglected – Newark neighborhoods.
“Nine percent of Newark families lack computers and about 20 percent of the city doesn't have an in-home broadband connection,” Aaron Meyerson, Chief Innovation Economy Officer & Director of Broadband for the City of Newark told ILSR.