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.

Cooperatives and Tennessee municipal broadband projects have nabbed a respectable chunk of Tennessee's latest round of middle and last mile broadband grants.

Tennessee’s Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD) recently announced the state had awarded more than $162.7 million in broadband and digital opportunity grants, funded primarily via federal COVID relief legislation.

Image

TNECD indicates that $97.2 million is being earmarked for last mile and middle mile connectivity programs, with $65.5 million set aside for digital opportunity programs. The grants should extend broadband to an additional 236,000 Tennessee residents across 92 counties. Winners will provide $48 million in matching funds and must complete all projects by the end of 2026.

As is often the case, the regional telecom monopoly nabbed the lion’s share of the grants and awards, with Charter (Spectrum) being awarded more than $11.7 million for projects across Polk, Hardin, and Wayne counties. Charter was the top winner in the TNECD’s 2022 grant awards as well, nabbing $20.4 million to fund expansion across six counties.

At the same time, municipalities and cooperatives have been fairly well represented in both the 2022 and this year’s awards.

The towns of Somerville and Washington Maine have kickstarted their long-percolating efforts to deliver fiber broadband to both long-neglected rural municipalities.

In an update posted to both towns' respective websites, officials say that the municipalities’ partner, Axiom Technologies, has begun construction on a dual-town fiber deployment funded by state and federal grants.

Somerville (est. pop. 600) and Washington (est. pop. 1,590) will be offering many local residents fiber access for the first time. Both of the deployments were made possible by a 2022 Broadband Infrastructure Program (BIP) grant from the NTIA, coordinated via the ConnectMaine Authority (now part of the Maine Connectivity Authority (MCA)).

Image

Established in 2021, the MCA is a quasi-governmental agency funded through a combination of federal and state resources, and tasked with ensuring the even, equitable deployment of broadband access to all corners of the Pine Tree State. They’ll be playing a central role in the disbursement of the state’s $272 million upcoming BEAD subsidy awards.

Fiber Finally  

According to a Washington, Maine FAQ, the total cost of network deployment for the town was $2,913,919 ($2,622,527 from the NTIA, $291,392 from the state). The Somerville FAQ indicates that their segment of the network construction was $1,601,901 ($1,441,711 from the NTIA, $160,190 from the state).

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.

Image

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.

On a map, the Crenshaw District is a 2.9 square-mile neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles, home to nearly 30,000 mostly black residents.

In the popular imagination, Crenshaw is the backdrop for the Oscar-nominated movie "Boyz In the Hood" – the real life neighborhood that cultivated the likes of former Los Angeles Mayor Thomas Bradley; rappers-turned-actors Ice Cube and Ice T; and the late rapper/entrepreneur Nipsey Hussle.

But on the streets of Crenshaw, a transformative vision is unfolding – an initiative local leaders describe as “a reparative development project.”

The idea is to inspire and empower neighborhood residents with strategic investments rather than displace them through gentrification. The effort is being led by Destination Crenshaw, a nonprofit community organization established in 2017 to celebrate the history and culture of Black Los Angeles.

The most visible part of the vision is to create the largest Black public art project in the nation along Crenshaw Boulevard, the 1.3 mile spine of the neighborhood – or what Destination Crenshaw describes as an “open air museum” centered around “pocket parks” and a “comprehensive streetscape design” that will feature commissioned murals and sculptures from local Black artists.

Yellow Springs, Ohio has been thinking about a city-owned fiber network since 2016, when the municipality issued its first white paper discussing its potential benefits.

Since then, the city has made steady inroads on making those plans a reality, recently culminating in a fiber pilot project currently being used by 100 local homes and businesses.

Launched in 2022, the pilot project currently offers locals two tiers of fiber access: A “standard tier” at a symmetrical 300 megabits per second (Mbps) for $45 a month, and a “premium” tier offering symmetrical gig speed service for $65 a month. There currently are no usage caps, long-term contracts, or installation fees.

Image

“Final pricing will be determined after the pilot project, and could be higher or lower depending on the ‘take rate,’ customer service offerings, and other knowledge gained from the pilot,” the project FAQ states.

Currently the fiber network covers roughly 600 potential homes around Yellow Springs, and was funded entirely via a $300,000 grant from Broadband Ohio. The city also provides free Wi-Fi via 12 Wi-Fi access points spread throughout the city’s downtown business district.

Like so many U.S. communities, Yellow Springs sees a dearth of meaningful broadband competition, resulting in spotty access, high prices, and substandard service.

Charter Communications (Spectrum) enjoys a monopoly over next-gen broadband access across the majority of the city. Some areas are peppered with sluggish and expensive AT&T DSL.

Schoharie County, New York officials have applied for a $30 million New York State ConnectALL grant with the hopes of eventually building a $33 million, county-wide fiber network.

The shape and scope of the network has yet to be determined, but the county hopes to build a network that brings affordable access to the rural, agriculture-heavy county.

“Schoharie County applied for the grant under the NYS MIP program on April 19th, in an attempt to bring high speed broadband access to every premise in the county,” Deputy County Administrator Jim Halios told ILSR.

Notoriously over-optimistic FCC data currently states that Schoharie County enjoys 92 percent broadband coverage county-wide. In reality, broadband access in the county is largely dominated by a monopoly enjoyed by Charter Spectrum, which was nearly kicked out of the state entirely in 2019 for misleading regulators and failing to evenly deploy access.

Advocates for better Internet access are breathing a sigh of relief in New York as the State Assembly passed a budget bill yesterday that did not include an amendment that would have undermined the state’s municipal broadband grant program.

As we reported last month, buried in language near the bottom of the Assembly budget proposal was a Trojan horse legislative sources said was being pushed by lobbyists representing Charter Spectrum.

The amendment, which did not survive the budget reconciliation process, proposed to limit Municipal Infrastructure Program grants to projects that targeted “unserved and underserved locations only” – a restriction that would have made municipal broadband projects in the state less likely to become financially viable.

Image

Created as part of New York’s billion dollar ConnectALL Initiative, the MIP is specifically designed to support municipal broadband projects. Such projects are routinely targeted by lobbyists for the big monopoly providers intent on preventing any competition to their often spotty, high-cost service offerings.

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.

Frustrated by a lack of affordable broadband access, the city tabbed Magellan Advisors in 2015 to conduct a feasibility study into city-provided broadband access. After a survey showed a majority of city residents would support such an initiative, Chicopee Electric Light launched Crossroads Fiber in the summer of 2019 in a small pilot area.

Since then, the utility has been expanding access steadily to the rest of the city – joining a growing roster of city-owned utilities that are responding to broadband market failure by taking matters into their own hands.

Image

Planners have broken down the city into 144 different fiberhoods, where user interest gleaned from the project website dictates which parts of the city see deployment priority. It’s an approach some communities adopt to finance network construction without having to rely on tax revenues or loans. For Chicopee the estimated cost to build a fiber network that reaches all 55,000 residents is between $30 and $35 million.

Selma, Alabama – and parts of 16 other communities in eight different counties – will soon be connected to a new, $230 million open access fiber network that aims to bring affordable broadband to historically marginalized sections of the Yellowhammer State.

The deployment comes courtesy of a public private partnership (PPP) the city has struck with Meridiam Infrastructure and Meridiam-owned YellowHammer IT, an agreement that will expand fiber access across Alabama’s Black Belt region on the back of a $5.1 million Capital Projects Fund (CPF) grant.

At a March 2 press conference, Selma Mayor James Perkins Jr. said the partnership with Meridiam and Yellowhammer should result in fiber access being deployed to 85 percent of city homes and businesses, regardless of residents’ income levels, with $45 million of the $230 million investment dedicated to bring fiber service to Selma, the “Queen City of the Black Belt.”

Image

“High-speed reliable broadband is no longer nice to have. Today, it’s as important as gas, water, and electricity,” Perkins stated at the event. “In our increasingly digital society, cities without access to fiber broadband risk falling behind. It’s critical that the City of Selma makes fiber broadband accessible citywide by building utility-like infrastructure that serves our residents’ needs today and for generations to come.”