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.

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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.

Innovative digital equity nonprofit DigitalC has been working for years to shore up affordable broadband access in underserved cities like Cleveland, Ohio. 

Now the organization is enjoying new momentum for its plans to expand fixed wireless broadband access in the city thanks to a $500,000 cash infusion from tech giant Google. According to a recent announcement, the donation includes next-generation Fixed Wireless Access (ngFWA) equipment from Tarana, which will allow DigitalC to expand its Canopy home broadband service – which provides symmetrical 100 megabit per second (Mbps) at $18 a month – to even more neighborhoods in Ohio.

The nonprofit just celebrated the connection of its 6,000th household in Cleveland, a city once ranked the worst-connected large city in the U.S. by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA).

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“This meaningful investment from GFiber adds bandwidth to our capacity to scale the Cleveland Model,” DigitalC CEO Joshua Edmonds said of the cash infusion. “This community-based blueprint proves that next-generation technology can be deployed quickly, trusted deeply, and scaled effectively to deliver the superior internet experience more communities deserve.”

The Maine Connectivity Authority (MCA) has chosen Sertex Broadband Solutions to help build and manage a massive portion of the state’s 536-mile Maine Online Optical Statewide Enabling Network (MOOSE Net) middle mile fiber network.

According to the MCA, Sertex will engineer and construct a 450-mile segment of MOOSE NET on the back of a $30 million grant.

The effort is expected to dramatically improve broadband connectivity for 11,000 homes and businesses as well as 200 community anchor institutions, including rural Maine schools, libraries, and healthcare facilities.

The decision comes after the MCA, Maine’s quasi-governmental public agency in charge of broadband expansion and digital equity, issued a request for proposal (RFP) back in late 2024 looking for partners.

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“Maine's low population density and rural geography make it difficult to attract the same investment that other states have seen over the past two decades, “ MCA President Andrew Butcher said. “We are excited to work with Sertex with their proven track record of delivering a network of this scale, and one that is so critical for our State. MOOSE Net will ensure that Maine has the broadband infrastructure that communities and businesses need to thrive and grow.”

In partnership with the Maine Department of Transportation and The University of Maine System, MCA secured a $30 million competitive grant from the National Telecommunications Information Administration's (NTIA) Enabling Middle Mile Broadband Infrastructure Program. The MCA middle mile proposal was one of 32 selected from a pool of more than 260 applications submitted to the NTIA.

Officials in Bountiful, Utah say they’ve completed the city’s $48 million open access fiber network a year ahead of schedule, bringing fast, affordable broadband access to the Salt Lake City suburb of 45,000.

“We have completed the Bountiful City fiber project and built out the entire city with an open access network,” Utopia Fiber Executive Director Roger Timmerman recently said at the Fiber Connect Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. “This was a three-year project, and we completed it nearly a full year ahead of schedule.”

In a unanimous city council vote in the summer of 2023, officials approved $48 million in bonds to fund construction of the city-owned open access fiber network. 

Like UTOPIA’s broader network, the city then leases access out to numerous independent ISPs, creating a massive influx of competitive, affordable last mile fiber access.

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The city of Bountiful owns the network while UTOPIA designed, built and manages the network and takes a share of the revenue.

Thanks to the partnership, locals now have access to 14 different competing broadband providers, offering symmetrical and affordable 250 megabit per second (Mbps), 1 gigabit per second (Gbps), 2.5 Gbps, and 10 Gbps tiers – plus a $38 to $44 local network access charge.

UTOPIA officials say the network currently passes around 16,500 addresses, and they’ve been seeing 200 signups per month.

“We need a year to really answer that question,” Timmerman said when asked for specifics on area adoption rates. “In Bountiful we’re confident we’ll get take rates of 40% or higher. There’s a lot of demand there.”

Syracuse, NY officials say the city’s community-owned broadband network Surge Link continues to dramatically expand two years after the network first launched, bringing affordable broadband access to the city of 145,000 – with a particular eye on helping the city’s disadvantaged.

A recent update from the city states that the network now serves more than 9,200 households in Syracuse, located in central upstate New York. The latest expansion brought the service into the city’s Valley, Skunk City, Washington Square, Northside, Prospect Hill and Hawley-Green neighborhoods in early July.

The Surge Link initiative is part of a broader $15 million investment into fixed-wireless access broadband infrastructure into a city traditionally left underserved by giant regional telecoms.

A lack of competition between dominant regional monopolies Charter (Spectrum) and Verizon has resulted in spotty access, high prices, and slow speeds.

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The lion’s share of Surge Link’s latest expansion was made possible by a $10.8 million grant from the New York State ConnectALL initiative, a multi-layered billion-dollar project to dramatically boost high speed Internet access across the state leveraging a series of new grant programs, education initiatives, broadband mapping improvements, and digital equity proposals.

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.

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

Hudson, Ohio officials are now accepting bids on a promising new fiber-to-the-home network that should dramatically improve affordable, next-generation broadband access in the city of 23,000.

It’s just the latest effort by a city that has been exploring the option of municipal broadband infrastructure for more than a decade.

Just 15 miles north of Akron, the city has spent the better part of the last three years preparing to forge a new public-private-partnership (PPP) to expand access.

The city already owns and operates its own broadband network (Velocity Broadband, launched in 2015), but it exclusively serves the city’s businesses with gigabit-capable fiber.

The city’s new partnership would leverage that existing business network and core fiber assets to finally bring fiber optic connectivity to the city’s residents.

“The proposed work includes the installation of new fiber optic infrastructure, including approximately 11,750 lineal feet of 1.5-inch underground HDPE fiber conduit via horizontal directional drilling, 7,900 lineal feet of new aerial fiber, the placement of underground fiber vaults and handholes, and the subsequent fiber optic cable installation and testing,” the city’s proposal states.

The CBN team's Associate Director for Communications Sean Gonsalves recently published a piece in ProMarket about the continuing consolidation of telecommunication markets and why municipal broadband is a better option. He writes:

"Last month, AT&T announced it would acquire all of Lumen Technologies’ fiber internet business for $5.75 billion. According to a company statement, the purchase will net AT&T one million fiber customers and significantly expand its fiber footprint in Denver, Las Vegas, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Orlando, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, and Seattle.

Across AT&T and Lumen’s service areas, where they offer wired or licensed fixed wireless Internet service, more than half of the locations they claim to serve have two or fewer options for high-speed internet service.

Good news for AT&T stockholders. Not so good news for broadband-hungry subscribers who, for years now, have been paying among the highest prices for internet service of any developed nation in the world. Ever wonder why that is? The answer is as painfully obvious as our overpriced monthly internet bills.

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When big telecom giants consolidate—especially in a market where most people have only one or maybe two internet service providers (ISPs) to choose from—the results are predictable: without meaningful competition for something as fundamental as internet connectivity in an internet-connected world, monopolists have no incentive to improve service, invest in network upgrades, or compete on price.