Tired of the high prices, spotty coverage, and slow speeds of regional monopoly broadband providers, the remote West Texas city of Monahans has spent the last decade taking matters into their own hands.

Now, thanks to hard work, determination, and local philanthropy, the city’s 7,500 residents are headed for the right side of the digital divide.

Carroll Faulkner, who consulted with the city on its project, and Teresa Burnett, executive director of the Monahans Chamber of Commerce, told ILSR the project to bring Monahans into the modern era has been a challenging labor of love.

It has recently culminated in the completion of the first phase of the project, bringing affordable fiber to around 2,000 residents in city 36 miles southwest of Odessa.

Image

“We are very passionate about this project,” Burnett told ILSR. “It's been a lot of ups and downs, and it's been 10 long years.”

The city’s network build is in partnership with Hosted America, which is acting as the first last mile ISP serving residents, and View Capital’s American Fiber Infrastructure Fund, which technically owns the finished network. Hosted America enjoys early exclusive usage of the network, but the duo say the network will ultimately be open access, allowing numerous partners.

Phase one of the network plan was completed roughly a year ago, bringing affordable fiber for the first time ever to around 2,000 locals. The full cost of phase one was expected to be around $4.5 million, said Faulkner, of which around $1 million was funded by the 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

The remainder of the funding was obtained from View Capital and a coalition of philanthropic organizations.

Clallam County, Washington and Astound Broadband have begun construction on a major new joint partnership that will bring affordable fiber access to more than 1,500 homes across the largely rural Northwestern part of The Evergreen State.

In a joint announcement, Astound states that it will be deploying more than 100 miles of fiber across long-neglected Clallam County, starting with a 15-mile deployment along the State Route 112 Highway corridor, beginning just west of Port Angeles.

The deployment is a joint collaboration between The Public Utility District (PUD) No. 1 of Clallam County, Astound Broadband, and the Northwest Open Access Network (NOANet), a nonprofit coalition developed by regional Washington Communications Utility Districts (CUD) to bring more reliable, affordable fiber access to neglected rural Washington communities.

Image

Clallam county uses the NOANet fiber optic system for real-time metering, energy management, load control, and networking among remote utility facilities, though they’re keen to leverage the open access network to help provide last mile residential service.

The new $22 million fiber investment is being funded by a combination of a $16 million grant from the the Washington State Broadband Office made possible by the American Rescue Project Act (ARPA), $4.5 million from the Washington State Department of Commerce Public Works Board Broadband Program, and $1.7 million in funding from Clallam County.

The expansion will provide last mile fiber access to at least 1,500 new local residents, but will also prioritize bringing fiber to fire houses, schools, libraries, medical clinics, and other key anchor institutions in the county of 78,000.

Since it first broke ground in 2014, Longmont, Colorado’s city-owned NextLight fiber network has won numerous awards and inspired countless communities nationwide. But the network, which recently expanded access to more than 28,000 area residents, is also trailblazing in another area: ensuring that fiber is affordable to low income, marginalized populations.

NextLight unveiled its locally-funded Internet Assistance Program (IAP) last year. The program provides low-income residents with a $25 discount off of NextLight’s already affordable fiber pricing. As a result, locals can receive symmetrical 100 megabit per second (Mbps) service for as little as $14.95 a month, and symmetrical 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) fiber for $45.

To apply, households must qualify for any of a number of existing federal programs, including the FCC’s Lifeline, Head Start, Medicaid-MSP or SLMP, Veterans or survivor’s pension, Section 8, WIC, food stamps, Federal Pell Grants, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), SVVSD Education Benefit, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), or Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR).

IAP was created to offset the collapse of the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which provided a $30 per month discount off of the broadband bills of low-income Americans. The program was summarily discontinued after Republicans in Congress refused to fund a program extension.

According to Longmont officials, not only is their IAP program available to a much broader qualification base, with more than 1000 subscribers now enrolled, the program is currently helping 14 percent more city subscribers than the FCC’s ACP did at its peak.

Construction crews have begun work on Fort Bragg’s long-awaited municipal fiber network, which will ultimately bring affordable fiber to the California city of 7,000.

The total cost of the project is estimated to be $17 million. Of that, $10 million will be paid for by a Last Mile Federal Funding Account (FFA) grant from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), awarded in February to help fund the construction of a Middle Mile Broadband Network (MMBN) that will run directly through the heart of Ft. Bragg.

The remaining project costs will be paid for by a $7 million, 20-year loan at 4.85 percent from EverBank, recently approved by the Fort Bragg city council.

“This project is a cornerstone for the future of Fort Bragg,” City Manager Isaac Whippy said of the milestone. “Reliable, high-speed internet is no longer a luxury – it’s a necessity. With this investment, we’re closing the digital divide and making Fort Bragg a more connected, competitive, and inclusive community.”

According to a city announcement, Ft. Bragg’s citywide fiber network, 170 miles north of San Francisco, is being designed with a centralized data hub and 15 Distribution Areas (DAs). Using horizontal directional drilling, crews will install conduit and fiber underground – primarily beneath sidewalks and alleys – connecting to a fiber terminal located near the edge of the city’s right-of-way at each property.

Grays Harbor PUD, a wholesale telecom utility in Washington state, says it’s getting to work leveraging a $7 million grant from the Washington State Broadband Office to expand affordable fiber access in the South Elma, Porter, and Cedarville areas of the Evergreen State.

Grays Harbor PUD was one of 16 Washington utilities chosen by the Washington State Broadband Office to receive grant funding during awards first announced back in 2023.

The $6.9 million grant is helping the PUD run fiber along State Route 12, using existing utility poles to expand the service possibilities for customers in South Elma, Porter, Cedarville, and surrounding areas. Once complete, the PUD is expected to lease fiber access to roughly a dozen Internet service providers, serving more than 500 new locations.

Image

The construction is being built in partnership with Paramount Communications, and officials are warning locals to expect some construction delays as crews get to work across the impacted parts of Grays Harbor County on the western side of Washington state.

“The Grays Harbor PUD appreciates your patience and understanding as we complete this project,” Grays Harbor PUD Telecom Business Coordinator Sara Travers says in an announcement. “Our teams are committed to working safely and efficiently to bring improved broadband services to your area.”

Last year, Timnath, Colorado broke ground on a new $20 million fiber network with the goal of dramatically expanding affordable fiber access to the town of 7,100 residents.

Some of the nation’s leading thinkers and doers in the community broadband sector will connect and collaborate in the nation’s capital for the inaugural Community First: The Future of Public Broadband Conference and Hill Day next week.

Slated for May 14 and 15, the two-day conference is being hosted by the American Association for Public Broadband (AAPB) and New America Open Technology Institute (OTI), in partnership with ILSR's Community Broadband Networks Initiative, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, and the Community Broadband Action Network.

The in-person gathering will bring together public broadband champions, community leaders, policymakers, and industry experts to focus on strategy and advocacy in the face of potentially dramatic changes to the $42.5 billion BEAD program – the single-largest federal investment to ensure every household in the nation has access to high speed Internet connectivity.

Registration and tickets are still available here.

Image

With the rise of community-owned broadband networks and cooperatives now flourishing across the nation, organizers are hoping to create “an essential space to share best practices, discuss financing, shape public policy, and support the development and expansion of public broadband networks.”

Vermont’s Otter Creek Communications Utility District (CUD) says it has completed its ambitious fiber deployment, bringing affordable access to more than 6,000 homes and businesses in the Rutland County region of the Green Mountain State.

Otter Creek is another example of the way Vermont’s long under-served communities are bonding together via innovative new partnerships taking direct aim at the digital divide.

When last we had checked in on Otter Creek CUD, the CUD had just received a $9.9 million grant by the Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCBB). Otter Creek CUD then leveraged that grant funding to form a public-private partnership with Consolidated Communications.

Image

Otter Creek CUD Chair Laura Black tells ILSR that the partnership involved 335 miles of new fiber passing *6,000 locations. Of the total target reach, 1290 locations had never had broadband access previously. Between the Otter Creek grant awards and contributions from private providers, more than $24 million has been invested in Rutland County to expand fiber access.  

“We partnered with the existing ILEC business in most of our area, Consolidated Communications, to build and operate the fiber network with both their own contribution and grant funding we were able to secure,” Black said. “As well, a portion of our area was peeled off to allow the ILEC in three of the towns in our District to be served by the existing small ILEC business – Shoreham Telephone – under their own grant funding program (EACAM).”

Superior, Wisconsin officials say they’re getting very close to lighting up the first subscribers of a city-owned fiber network that will finally bring affordable, next-generation fiber access to the city’s long under-served community of 26,000.

“We have phase 1 in the ground and are working with Nokia right now for final configuration and testing,” Stephanie Becken, broadband manager for ConnectSuperior, tells ILSR.

“It's our plan to have our sign-up website ready in the next two weeks, as our two ISPs finalize their connections and offerings pages,” she says. “I'm hopeful we'll have drops and initial service started by mid-May, but we may be looking at June—there's always something!”

Image

In 2020 the city passed a resolution declaring fiber essential infrastructure. In 2021, the city council voted overwhelmingly to move forward on a deployment master plan developed for the city by EntryPoint Networks.

In 2023 the Superior city council voted 8-1 to approve deployment in the project’s first pilot area: a swath of around 830 homes and businesses lodged between Tower Avenue, Belknap Street, and North 21st streets. But the phase 1 target area has expanded a little since as the city has moved forward on logistics and planning.

The Port of Whitman County in Washington state has received a new $2.9 million grant it says will help dramatically expand affordable fiber access to the heavily rural county of 48,000. The Port of Whitman’s broadband expansions have traditionally been open access, which allow multiple competitors to compete over shared, community owned infrastructure, driving down costs.

The latest funding, from the Washington State Department of Commerce’s Community Economic Revitalization Board (CERB) will support the construction of dark fiber to approximately 109 additional unserved and underserved locations in Whitman County.

According to the county announcement the project, supported by $622,441 in local matching funds, will construct last-mile fiber infrastructure along Sunshine Road east of Pullman, along Kitzmiller Road north of Pullman, and west of Tekoa. The build outside of Tekoa will bring fiber to the Port of Whitman County’s Tekoa industrial site, which the Port acquired in 2023.  

“The Port is excited to partner with CERB on this broadband project,” said Kara Riebold, Port of Whitman County Executive Director.

“This continues our efforts to bridge the digital divide in rural Whitman County. We know that reliable broadband is no longer a luxury but a necessity for economic growth and are grateful for CERB’s continued investment in broadband across Washington State.”

In Washington State, several Public Utility Districts – including the Port Of Whitman County, the Port Of Coupeville, and the Port of Skagit in Skagit County – have leveraged millions in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) grants to deploy community-owned open access fiber, choosing Ziply as their operational partner.