Fast, affordable Internet access for all.
Before joining ILSR, Katie conducted outreach to members of rural electric cooperatives in western North Carolina. She holds a degree in economics and environmental studies from the University of Pittsburgh.
Last week, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance shared a statement on the killing of George Floyd and the ongoing — and necessary — protests against police brutality in Minneapolis, where ILSR has an office and where the Community Broadband Networks initiative i
Over the weekend, Frontier filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announcing that it would “welcome the inclusion” of the census blocks where it claims to newly offer broadband service into the upcoming Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF).
A bill close to being passed by the Louisiana State Legislature would allow electric cooperatives to expand Internet access but only in parts of the state without broadband currently.
As the novel coronavirus has spread across the United States, so too have efforts to bring Internet access to digitally disconnected households during a time of nationwide social distancing.
Our case study, How Local Providers Built the Nation’s Best Internet Access in Rural North Dakota, explains how the majority of rural North Dakota has access to gigabit fiber, highlighting how 15 telephone cooperatives and local companies came together to invest in their rural communities and build broadband networks across the state. In the 1990s, those companies united to purchase 68 rural telephone exchanges in North Dakota from regional provider US West (now CenturyLink). Then, they leveraged federal broadband funds to deploy some of the most extensive fiber networks in the country, turning North Dakota into the rural broadband oasis that it is today.
The fourth edition of our report, Cooperatives Fiberize Rural America: A Trusted Model for the Internet Age, reveals the steady growth of cooperative fiber since we originally released the report in 2017. In the report, we present rural telephone and electric cooperatives as a proven model to connect rural communities across the country with high-quality Internet access. This version updates the maps and analysis in the report with the most recent federal data.
In March, we reported on the formation of Deerfield Valley Communications Union District in Vermont.
