Vermont’s Communications Union Districts (CUDs), which were the subject of a 2024 ILSR report, continue to make steady inroads in delivering high-quality broadband access to long-neglected rural Vermont residents. 

That includes the Chittenden County Communication Union District (CCCUD), which recently announced the completion of a planned fiber extension into the heavily rural communities of Essex Town, Essex Junction, Jericho, Shelburne, Westford, and Williston.

The deployment was completed in partnership with Fidium Fiber, which says the expansion brought fiber optic connectivity to more than 1,900 homes and businesses across the six towns for the first time ever.

Users in these markets have the option of three tiers of service: a symmetrical 100 megabit per second (Mbps) tier for a promotional rate of $30 a month; a symmetrical 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) tier for a promotional rate of $50 per month; and a symmetrical 2 Gbps option for a promotional rate of $60 per month. Those prices jump to $70, $110, and $125 per month when the promo period ends.

The Bois Forte Band of Chippewa (also referred to as Ojibwe) has officially begun construction on a foundational fiber optic broadband expansion project in northern Minnesota that is poised to bridge the digital divide for thousands of Tribal residents.

The ambitious undertaking is supported by a significant $20 million grant awarded under the 2021 Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program, marking a major step forward in modernizing infrastructure for the sovereign nation.

The massive project aims to overhaul the existing connectivity landscape across the Bois Forte Reservation.

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Once completed, the new network will deliver a high-speed, future-proof up to 10 gigabit per second (Gbps) fiber-to-the-home network to over 2,097 largely-underserved Native American households, businesses, and community anchor institutions.

Many Tribal nations were skipped over by past fiber deployments either due to outright hostility to Tribal interests, or a disinterest in the work required to align for-profit deployments with the needs and wishes of what is often multiple Tribal territories.

For Bois Forte, this new fiber network is expected to have a transformative impact across several key sectors, fundamentally improving community access to vital services:

Lehi, Utah and its partner Strata Networks say they’ve completed construction of Lehi Fiber, the city-owned, open access fiber network that’s dramatically reshaped broadband affordability and competition in the city of 80,000.

When last we checked in with the folks in Lehi back in 2022, they had just broken ground on the new network after a feasibility study by Magellan found widespread local frustration with the lack of affordable local next-generation broadband access.

Three years later, the city says they’ve completed construction of the network, which is owned by the city but managed by Strata.

Lehi Fiber Administrative Services Manager Shaye Ruitenbeek tells ILSR that they’re pleased by the community response so far.

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Residents Now Have Choice of Five ISPs

“The Lehi Fiber Network has now passed approximately 23,000 locations, and we will continue expanding as the city grows,” Ruitenbeek said. “Currently, the network supports about 6,400 subscriptions, which represents an approximate 28 percent take rate.”

New Mexico’s Office of Broadband Access and Expansion (OBAE) has announced the completion of a landmark broadband infrastructure expansion project that delivered affordable next-gen broadband access to dozens of long-neglected homes in a remote subdivision in rural Chaves County.

According to the OBAE announcement, the successful completion of the Chaves County project is OBAE’s first grant project to reach 100 percent completion, and the first Connect New Mexico Pilot Program project funded through the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Capital Projects Fund to reach the final stage.

“This project’s completion delivers on the state’s promise to connect New Mexico families in the most remote areas of the state,” said Andy Exell, OBAE’s ARPA Program Coordinator.

“For these dozens of homeowners to finally get high-speed internet is a life changer.”

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Like so many rural U.S. communities, residents of Chaves County were often deemed unprofitable to serve by entrenched private phone providers.

That changed in  2023 when OBAE awarded Artesia, New Mexico based Penasco Valley Telephone Cooperative Inc. (PVT) an ARPA grant of $487,000. Officials say construction included roughly 11 miles of pole-attached aerial fiber to the rural residences. With matching PVT funds, the broadband project’s total budget was $649,000.

The U.S. Treasury awarded New Mexico $117 million in grants through ARPA to expand and deploy broadband to unserved and underserved neighborhoods. 

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.

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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.

Vermont’s expanding Communications Union Districts (CUD) are pioneering creative efforts to deploy affordable broadband to the rural parts of the Green Mountain State. That includes the Lamoille FiberNet CUD, which has been making steady progress expanding affordable fiber access to fiber in the most neglected parts of rural Vermont.

Back in 2023, the Lamoille FiberNet greenlit a $24 million public-private partnership with Fidium Fiber to deliver fiber broadband access to nearly every deliverable address in Lamoille County. Two years later and the county now says that target goal has been completed.

According to an announcement by the CUD, the collaboration resulted in the deployment of 550 miles of fiber, resulting in gigabit-capable next-generation broadband access being made available to 5,000 unserved or underserved addresses across the county.

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“This achievement represents years of collaboration, persistence, and smart partnership,” Andrew Ross, Lamoille FiberNet chair and Wolcott representative to the board, said in a statement. “Our shared goal was simple but ambitious: to make sure every home and business in our territory could connect to reliable, affordable, high-speed internet.”

By any measure, 2025 was a tough year in the grand project to extend fast, affordable, reliable broadband access to every home in the United States. The Digital Equity Act was abruptly cancelled, BEAD was restructured, small- and large-scale outages were common, and prices from the monopolies rose yet again.

But good things happened, too. In 2025, we saw seven new municipal broadband networks across the country that were lit up for service. As is usual, it was a mixture of partnerships, business models, and construction approaches to meet the unique challenges of a patchwork broadband landscape.

A Bountiful 2025 for Municipal Broadband

In California, the Gateway Cities Fiber Optic Network launched (eventually covering 23 cities); it will eventually cover 72 community anchor institutions and almost 5,000 unserved locations across member cities with the help of state grants.

Kitsap Public Utility District (KPUD) continues to expand its popular open access fiber network, bringing affordable next-generation broadband access to island locals long trapped on the wrong side of the digital divide.

“Kitsap PUD is accelerating its community-owned, open-access fiber build, with new distribution nodes coming online by early 2026, expanding capacity and reaching more underserved addresses,” the organization states in a recent update.

KPUD provides water, wastewater, and Internet service on Bainbridge Island and the neighboring peninsula in the Puget Sound in Washington state.

In 2016, officials long-frustrated by substandard regional broadband access decided to finally build an open access network that continues to expand, and now brings affordable gigabit fiber to locals via a half-dozen different competing broadband ISPs.

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An updated KPUD case study indicates that the existing network is currently comprised of more than 900 miles of fiber, with 21 new distribution nodes coming online early 2026. That node expansion is being heavily aided by $6.6 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding. According to officials, each node is capable of serving between 1,920 and 7,680 addresses.

Construction of the expansion is underway now, and is expected to be completed sometime in 2026.