Vienna, Maine recently launched its own municipal fiber network, finally bringing affordable next-generation broadband access to the small town’s 600 residents. As soon as service was made available, 240 of the town's 400 plus households immediately signed up for service, and the town’s focus has shifted to demonstrating the value of fast affordable access to remaining locals that regional incumbents are trying to lure away with temporary promotional offers.

The Vienna Broadband Authority recently told the Bangor Daily News it needs 270 consistent subscriber households to maintain financial viability, so they’ve taken to demonstrating high speed connectivity at the local firehouse in order to pique the public interest.

The Vienna network was made possible largely thanks to a $2.3 million grant in 2023 from the Maine Connectivity Authority (MCA), which in turn was made possible by the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) passed by Congress. The town-owned network is being run in cooperation with Machias-based Axiom.

Image

Axiom is providing locals with three options for service: symmetrical 100 megabit per second (Mbps) service for $60 a month; symmetrical 250 Mbps service for $65 a month; and symmetrical 500 Mbps service for $110 a month. The town also offers yearly seasonal rates of $612, $663, and $1122, respectively.

The municipality’s pricing comes without usage caps, hidden fees, or long term contracts. Interested locals have to pay a $99 installation deposit that is refunded once a customer is connected.  

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has announced a dramatic expansion of the state’s Municipal Infrastructure Program (MIP), resulting in an additional $36 million cash infusion for the growing number of creative, community-owned and operated fiber expansion projects in the state.

According to a state announcement, the existing MIP program, launched in early 2024, has already funded more than $268 million in assorted open access fiber projects across the state. A state broadband office dashboard tracks all active municipal projects funded to date.

That includes efforts like the growing open access municipal fiber network in Dryden, New York, which has been steadily delivering affordable next-gen fiber to the long-underserved rural communities of Dryden and nearby Caroline (population 3,321).

New York State officials say the $268 million in MIP grant funding has funded active projects across 24 New York counties, resulting in more than 2,300 miles of new fiber optic infrastructure and 68 new wireless hubs serving more than 96,000 homes and businesses. Most of this funding was made possible by the 2021 federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

The MIP program is part of New York state’s billion dollar ConnectALL Initiative, and was specifically designed to support municipal broadband projects proven to be a viable, and increasingly popular, way to bring affordable, high-quality Internet service to long-neglected U.S. communities.

Superior, Wisconsin’s community-owned open access fiber network has gone live in its first two deployment neighborhoods, as the city works toward providing affordable next-generation fiber access to the city’s long under-served community of 26,000.

When we last checked in with Superior back in April, the city was working with Nokia for final configuration and testing before launch. Now, the municipal broadband network says its ConnectSuperior fiber network is live in its first two target neighborhoods in the northern part of the city (see the city’s latest deployment map).

The city’s open access network means that multiple broadband providers can compete over the same shared infrastructure. Historically such a model helps boost competition and drive down costs for both consumers and competitors. That’s already the case in Superior, where the city’s website lists two providers – Advanced Stream and Superion Networks – with more on the way.

Image

Advanced Stream is offering locals three tiers of service: a symmetrical 300 megabit per second (Mbps) tier for $63 a month; a symmetrical 650 Mbps tier for $75 a month; and a symmetrical one gigabit per second (Gbps) tier for $83 a month.

Superion is offering three tiers of service as well: a symmetrical 300 Mbps tier for $63 a month; a symmetrical 650 Mbps tier for $75 a month; and a symmetrical 1 Gbps tier for $85 a month. Both companies offer phone bundles for a modest additional surcharge.

Conexon Connect, the ISP arm of fiber broadband builder Conexon, says it has completed its new fiber build in Cairo, Georgia in close collaboration with Grady Electrical Membership Corporation (EMC).

The finished network brings affordable fiber access to 158,000 homes and businesses across the state, including Cairo (population 10,054). 

It’s Conexon Connect’s seventh completed broadband fiber to the home project in Georgia and twelfth completed broadband network overall since the ISP was created in 2021.

In January of 2023 Grady EMC was awarded a $9.3 million grant made possible by the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). Grady announced its partnership with Conexon in March of 2023.

Grady EMC is technically the statewide trade association that serves Georgia’s 41 electric membership corporations. As we’re seeing across the country, these cooperatives are leveraging their century-old experience with rural electrification to push fiber into many rural areas long neglected by dominant regional telecom monopolies.

Image

“This project truly shows what's possible when a community comes together with a shared vision for a brighter, more connected future,” Grady EMC CEO John Long said in a statement.

Grady will be seeking additional funding opportunities to extend affordable fiber access to the cooperative’s 13,000 members across Grady, Decatur and Thomas counties.

*This is the first installment of an ongoing series we are calling Connected Complex looks at how states, local communities, and Internet service providers are working to address the often complex challenges involved in bringing high-speed Internet access to multi-dwelling units.

Massachusetts state leaders have announced a new $31.5 million investment to bring reliable, high-speed Internet access to residents in affordable and public housing statewide.

A key part of the major new investment initiative focuses on something that’s particularly challenging in the northeast: updating long outdated wiring in multiple-dwelling-units (MDUs) like apartments, condos, and housing developments, many of which were built before the advent of the Internet.

The funds are being provided by the Massachusetts Broadband Office’s (MBO) Residential Retrofit Program, which aims to deploy state-of-the-art broadband infrastructure to public and affordable housing properties across Massachusetts. MBI’s funding, in turn, was largely made possible by the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

In partnership with the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI), Gov. Maura Healey’s office awarded the grant money to four Internet service providers: Aervivo, Archtop Fiber, Comcast, and Community Broadband Networks FLX (CBN-FLX). All told, the funding is poised to deliver broadband access to 13,700 housing units across 60 Massachusetts municipalities.

As states struggle to readjust their plans to expand high-speed Internet access in the wake of the Trump administration “termination” of the Digital Equity Act, Vermont is working to address the multi-million dollar shortfall by aligning the state’s Digital Empowerment initiative with its newly established Affordable Long Drop Program.

The Affordable Long Drop Program was established to provide grants to eligible Internet service providers (ISPs) in order to cover the connection costs for Vermonters whose homes are beyond standard drop distances.

Typically, an ISP will pay for a standard drop, which is the final external link that connects a provider's distribution network to the end-user's location – a distance that most often spans a couple hundred feet or less.

In rural areas around the country, community-minded operators like telephone and electric cooperatives will often cover the first quarter of a mile. This has also been the case in Vermont, where many of the state’s Communications Union Districts (CUDs) have been footing the bill to cover as much as the first 2,000 feet of drop distance. But, as with any predominantly rural state, there are a number of homes located just beyond that 2,000 foot range.

The construction costs of extending fiber lines can get pricey the further the home is away from the main fiber routes. Vermont’s Affordable Long Drop Program aims to help pay for the drops costs of the last mile networks that are currently being built across the state to help ensure residents in harder-to-reach locations can still get Internet access.

Vineland, New Jersey officials say they’ve secured a $3.7 million grant from the state that will help expand fiber and wireless broadband access to the city of 62,000. Local officials are hopeful the grant is just the beginning steps toward dramatic expansion of affordable access.

Vineland’s new grant was made possible by the New Jersey Broadband Infrastructure Deployment Equity (NJBIDE) grant program. NJBIDE will be delivering $40 million in broadband grants via the state’s Capital Projects Fund (CPF), made largely possible by the 2021 federal passage of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

NJBIDE grants prioritize fiber optic infrastructure of 100 megabytes per second (Mbps) and mandates the provision of at least one low-cost option (not specifically defined by New Jersey) to serve low income communities – something increasingly important in the wake of the federal government’s retreat from efforts to ensure equitable and affordable broadband. (Still early in the process, the city has not yet determined the exact pricing and service tiers the network will offer once construction is complete).

Image

A 2024 city proposal indicates that city leaders want to spend between $35 and $40 million to create a citywide broadband network, starting with a citywide fiber ring. The city paid for a viability study from Bonfire that found that at least 42 percent of the City does not have access to viable, quality, affordable broadband service.

In the wake of a federal abandonment of most meaningful Internet equality efforts, California municipalities continue to take the fight for equitable broadband access into their own hands. 

That includes Sonoma County, California, where county officials have freshly greenlit expanded plans to provide free broadband access to low income residents.

Image

Target: Affordable Housing

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors recently announced that it has approved a list of new affordable housing sites that are eligible to receive free Internet for one year.

According to the county, 556 low-income Sonoma County households across 10 different housing locations should qualify for the free broadband service.

The deployments are being made possible by the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which continues to result in some fairly transformative fiber deployments countrywide.

“The Board has prioritized finding creative solutions to broadband infrastructure development in Sonoma County,” Board of Supervisors Chair Lynda Hopkins says of the effort.

“This free internet program is a step toward equity as we continue to pursue public funding and strategic partnerships that can finally close the digital divide facing many of our shared communities.”

In early 2023, Dryden, New York, formally launched the town’s municipal broadband network, becoming the first municipality in the state to provide residents with direct access to affordable, publicly owned fiber.

A year and a half later, and the town of 14,500 says they’ve just signed up their 400th subscriber and continue to make steady progress expanding the popular network into rural enclaves in and around Dryden long deemed “unprofitable” by regional telecom monopolies.

Dryden Fiber Executive Director David Makar tells Ithaca-based local news outlet 607 News Now that the first year and a half of operations focused on building the core fiber ring around the city.

They’ve since shifted to the time-consuming task of extending last mile fiber access out to rural unserved and underserved homes in Dryden and nearby Caroline (population 3,321).

“There’s about 500 households between Dryden and Caroline that if they want to get online – it’s dial up modems, like it’s the year 2000,” Makar says. “Since we are very rural…there’s no easy way to get a lot of these houses,” he notes, indicating that the logistics and permissions for rural pole attachments have been unsurprisingly time consuming.

Image

Makar said there’s about 800 homes currently waiting for access in many of these rural areas.

For decades U.S. broadband policymaking has been plagued by inaccurate and badly-managed data that has significantly harmed efforts to not just track U.S. broadband deployment, but ensure that billions in taxpayer dollars are being wisely spent to address the problem.

From inaccurate broadband mapping data and an over-reliability on industry-provided coverage claims, to inconsistent broadband definitions and patchwork federal oversight, a new study by the Pew Charitable Trusts examined decades of U.S. broadband policy, and data analysis and found plenty of room for improvement.

Image

According to a 2022 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, there have been 133 programs across 15 federal agencies supporting and funding U.S. broadband deployment efforts, propped up by more than $44 billion in taxpayer dollars from 2015 to 2020 alone.

ILSR studies have historically shown those funds haven’t always been spent wisely; often being dumped into the laps of the very same regional telecom monopolies whose attacks on competition and government oversight resulted in substandard access in the first place.

There’s billions more waiting in the wings: as part of the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), $25 billion was specifically earmarked for broadband expansion.