The ​​soundproofed privacy pod tucked inside the first floor of the Rural Edge affordable housing development may be one of the most consequential pieces of infrastructure built in Vermont since the state’s Communications Union Districts (CUDs) first began deploying fiber networks.

With a population of just over 500 Vermonters living in the small town of Groton — where the nearest hospital is a 30-minute drive away and not every conversation can or should be overheard at home — the fiber-connected privacy pods are small enough to fit just two people, but private enough for life-enhancing online conversations to be had.

“Groton is where the largest percent of folks are without high speed Internet access. It’s highly unserved, except for downtown,” explained Christa Shute, Executive Director of NEK Broadband, which recently combined with the CVFiber CUD to form a 72-town telecommunication utility district now providing fiber Internet service across some of the most rural parts of the most rural state in the U.S.

Thanks to the commitment of Groton volunteers and town leaders and their intimate knowledge of their community – backed with the resources of the Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCCB) — “we knew what addresses didn’t have service,” Shute tells ILSR, fresh off the weekend’s grand opening celebration of the Groton Connectivity Hub, which also featured a live fiber splicing demo, online safety presentations, and drop-in tech help for the public.

Moore Haven, Florida-based Glades Electric Cooperative has completed a long-planned fiber broadband network into largely unserved parts of the Sunshine State. The 1,600-mile network, built in conjunction with Conexon Connect, now spans Glades, Hendry, Highlands and Okeechobee counties, and the vast majority of the cooperative’s electrical footprint.

Like so many U.S. cooperatives, Glades Electric, founded in 1945, is leveraging a long history with rural electrification to inform its fiber broadband expansion plans and bring connectivity to those long-stranded by market failure and a lack of Internet access competition.

Also like most U.S cooperatives, the upgrades not only bring affordable Internet access, they aid in monitoring and repairing the existing electrical network.

“In addition to closing the digital divide for our cooperative members, we are pleased to update and expand our communications to our substations, corporate offices, grid connected devices and beyond, as a result of our project and long-term partnership with Conexon Connect,” said Michael Roberge, Glades Electric Cooperative CEO

For many rural Florida subscribers getting fiber for the first time, the speeds and pricing are better than what’s seen in many urban markets.

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Conexon offers locals four fiber pricing tiers: an “Essentials” plan offering 200 megabits per second (Mbps) symmetrical for $59.95 per month; a “Premier” plan delivers up to 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) symmetrical for $79.95 per month; an “Ultimate” plan offering symmetrical 2 Gbps for $99.95 per month; and the top-tier “Elite” symmetrical 5 Gbps plan with variable pricing.

The Okanogan County Electric Cooperative (OCEC) and the Okanogan County Public Utility District (PUD) say they’re making steady progress on bringing affordable fiber broadband access to Okanogan County, a highly rural stretch of rugged land in Washington state on the border of Canada.

According to the organizations, the coalition is poised to bring next-generation fiber to as many as 1,366 peppered along the upper Methow Valley this year starting near Chewuch River and ending at Lost River. Many of these areas will be seeing fiber upgrades for the first time ever after years stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide.

According to a presentation at a town hall last month, officials stated that the project will include 98 miles of underground fiber deployment and 88 miles of new aerial fiber deployment. A mainline backbone fiber between Twisp and Winthrop is completed and functional, providing a redundant loop feed of fiber between the two areas, they stated.

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Construction on the project started back in March, and should be completed by the end of the year, OCEC’s contractor, Shawn VanGeystel of Cannon Construction, recently told the Methow Valley News.

The electrical cooperative’s fiber arm is named MethowNet. It offers three tiers of fiber service, though pricing varies slightly between the North and South Valley.

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:

U.S. Senators Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) have introduced a bill that would not only reauthorize the USDA’s ReConnect Loan and Grant program.

As part of the reauthorization, the proposed legislation aims to improve and expand the program so that Communications Union Districts (CUDs) would be eligible for federal broadband subsidies.

According to the announcement, the reauthorization would set a baseline of symmetrical 100 megabits per second (Mbps) connections for broadband grants, up from the program’s dated current standard of 25/3 Mbps.

The bill also clarifies that the USDA can make grants, loans, or grant-loan combinations under ReConnect, and claims to “improve coordination and communication among stakeholders at the federal level.”

“The last few years have shown all of us how important high-speed broadband is to our communities. From online school and remote work to telemedicine, a good connection is essential,” Senator Welch said of the reauthorization. 

“Many rural communities don’t have access to broadband at all, let alone the higher speeds needed to participate in today’s digital economy.”

The duo are quick to point out that over a third of Americans lack access to one or no broadband provider, and more than 45 million Americans lack fixed terrestrial 100 megabit per second (Mbps) downstream broadband, the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) minimum standard for broadband access.

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.

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.

Last year we noted how “scrappy” Island residents in Maine were taking matters into their own hands and building their own fiber broadband networks despite massive financial and logistic challenges. One such community, Isle au Haut, says it has completed its fiber deployment with ample help from locals – and federal and state grants.

After a decade of planning, several dozen residents of the island (with a summer population of around 300) recently celebrated a ribbon cutting ceremony on June 28, alongside build partners that included the Island Institute, Axiom Technologies, and Hawkeye Fiber Optics.

The deployment required the construction of a new six mile undersea fiber run, the creation of a new central switch station near the town landing, and last mile fiber deployment to residents currently connected to the power grid. All overseen by the The Isle Au Haut Broadband Committee, first established back in 2018.

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In 2022, Isle au Haut was awarded a grant from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, (NTIA) with matching funds contributed by the State of Maine and the Maine Connectivity Authority.