A new provider named Halo Fiber is hoping to leverage hundreds of millions in recent Alabama middle mile broadband network grants to extend affordable fiber broadband to state residents long stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide.

The new provider says it’s not quite ready to reveal full launch details (including target markets, speeds, or pricing), but told ILSR it should enter its first four fiber markets later this year thanks in part to a flood of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding in the state.

“We will be releasing pricing and target markets early this summer in May or June,” Halo Co-founder and CEO Brian Snider told ILSR. “Speeds are still being finalized as well but they will be symmetrical from 250 up and down to multi gig options.”

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Halo says its primary focus will be to partner with public and private entities to build fast and affordable broadband networks, empower access to better education, telehealth, and economic opportunities, and ensure quality customer service in neglected markets.

“Ten years ago, myself and other members of the Halo team worked on an initiative that identified infrastructure gaps across the entire state,” Snider said in additional comments to BamaBuzz.

“We found that was a big gap in middle mile connectivity – especially in Alabama’s Black Belt where there was almost no high speed infrastructure,” he added.

Nearly a fifth of Alabama residents – or just over a million people – lack access to reliable high speed Internet.

The $42.5 billion federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant program is facing what appears to be a significant overhaul as the new administration aims to alter, among other things, one of program’s key tenets: a preference for building fiber networks.

Meanwhile, a new ILSR policy brief – “BEAD Should Continue to Prioritize Fiber Internet Network Investments” – makes the case for why “these changes would repeat past policy mistakes and waste billions of dollars while delivering subpar Internet access to rural families at much higher prices.”

The brief goes on to succinctly describe why fiber networks should continue to be prioritized:

“In designing BEAD, Congress recognized that it was foolish to spend thousands of dollars per home every 5-10 years to deliver obsolete connections and chose instead to build fiber optic networks that will last generations – ultimately both saving taxpayer dollars and delivering an equitable Internet access option to millions of rural homes.”

And while the policy brief points to important long-term consequences that should be considered to ensure rule changes don’t squander a “generational investment” by building “something more temporary and inferior to the services found on every street in urban and suburban areas,” the brief does not argue that other technologies should not be a part of the mix.

“To be clear, BEAD’s priority for fiber does not bar the use of other technologies when appropriate. In cases where the cost of fiber is simply too great, other technologies are on the table – likely wireless options of both terrestrial and low-earth orbit,” the brief says.

After decades of redlining and broadband “digital discrimination” by the nation’s biggest telecom monopolies, the FCC finally began taking aim at the problem in 2023. Now the entirety of those efforts are poised to be dismantled, courtesy of the Trump administration’s broad, controversial frontal assault on discrimination reforms and civil rights.

The 2021 infrastructure bill set aside $42.5 billion to expand broadband into all unserved parts of the United States.

But it also tasked the FCC with crafting new rules taking aim at “digital discrimination.” On November 15th of 2023 the agency obliged, passing rules banning ISPs from broadband discrimination based on income, race, or religion.

Civil rights and digital equity activists were split on the potential impact of the rules, but they did agree on one thing: it was historic for federal policymakers to finally admit that telecom monopoly deployments had unfairly excluded many low income and minority neighborhoods from affordable, next-generation broadband access.

With uncertainty swirling around the future of BEAD and Digital Equity Act programs in the wake of an Executive Order by the Trump administration freezing federal funding and loan programs, the next Building for Digital Equity (#B4DE) live stream is shaping up to be perhaps the most monumental one to date.

“Charting the Course: Adapting to Policy Shifts While Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize” promises to bring hundreds of digital inclusion practitioners together for the increasingly popular virtual gathering that aims to offer insights and ground-truth on how communities continue to their work in closing the digital divide at a time when the programs established to do so have been tossed into disarray.

Registration is now open here.

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Slated for March 13 from 3 to 4:15 pm ET, the upcoming live stream will once again be co-hosted by ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) and sponsored by UTOPIA Fiber.

Wadsworth, Ohio officials say they’re making steady progress on the expansion of a city-owned broadband network that’s extending affordable fiber connectivity to the city’s nearly 25,000 residents.

Originally a coaxial-based network, the city now says it’s in the process of delivering Wi-Fi to many city residents while they go block-by-block removing older coaxial cable and upgrading residents to more future-proof fiber optic connectivity.

All told, city officials say they currently have around 5,800 existing subscribers that will ultimately be upgraded to fiber.

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Wadsworth, Ohio first launched its hybrid fiber-coaxial CityLink network back in 1997, and has been offering broadband, television, and phone access to the community ever since.

In 2020 ILSR spoke with Wadsworth IT Manager Steve Lange in Episode 438 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast.

Affordable, Popular Alternatives To Monopoly Power

The network, unlike many similar deployments, is separate from the city’s municipal electric department. Wadsworth Assistant Service Director Mike Testa recently told the Medina County Gazette that the city has completed around 400 fiber installations so far, including a recently updated area along Weatherstone Drive where 120 homes were connected.

In the City of Sherwood, a mostly residential bedroom community 16 miles south of Portland, officials have been quietly cultivating a digital vineyard across Oregon’s “Gateway to Wine Country.”

As part of its on-going work to build out a citywide fiber network, Sherwood Broadband recently secured a $9 million grant from the Oregon Broadband Office Broadband Deployment Program (BDP) to continue expanding Sherwood’s municipally-owned network into neighboring rural communities just outside city limits.

The grant award is part of $132 million in federal Rescue Plan funds the state is doling out to an array of community-owned broadband initiatives for 16 projects across 17 counties.

Award winners include Beacon Broadband, a subsidiary of the Coos-Curry Electric Cooperative ($19.4 million); Jefferson County ($19.2 million); Douglas Fast Net, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Douglas Electric Cooperative ($8.5 million); the Idaho-based member-owned cooperative Farmers Mutual Telephone Company, which offers broadband service in Malheur County, OR ($18.9 million); and a handful of independent providers like Blue Mountain Networks ($6.5 million) and Ziply Fiber ($10.2 million), recently acquired by Bell Canada.