Consumer and civil rights groups last week told the Trump administration that their proposed “reforms” of the FCC’s Lifeline program would undermine efforts to ensure equitable, affordable access to the internet for all Americans, and are based on lies about immigrant fraud.
Locals in Longmeadow, Massachusetts say they’re being bombarded with misleading mailers, texts, and phone calls from a telecom-industry linked group trying to mislead the public ahead of a key vote on the city’s plan to begin construction of a municipal broadband fiber network today.
In yet another bruising blow in the fight to ensure equitable access to high-speed Internet service, an appeals court struck down federal rules this week that aimed to combat digital redlining.
In the marathon to bring universal high-speed Internet service to the most rural state in the nation, Vermont is heading into the last-mile stretch of the race with the finish line in sight.
Leading members of the fiber industry descended on Orlando, Fla. this week for the Fiber Broadband Association's annual Fiber Connect conference to take stock of a national inflection point fueled by the federal BEAD program and the all-consuming rise of AI.
The city of Longmeadow, Massachusetts has failed to get a two-thirds voting majority necessary to move forward with its plan to deploy affordable fiber to every city resident.
The Okanogan County Electric Cooperative and the Okanogan County Public Utility District 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.
Last May, we shared a dashboard we built to track how community networks were doing in California's Last-Mile Federal Funding Account broadband grant program. With a new round of winners recently announced, we've updated our dashboards to show who, where, and how much community networks are getting.
Our popular webinar serieswith the American Association of Public Broadband returns on March 19. It will dive into the challenge of how local communities are tackling the digital divide in multi-dwelling units.
In late 2024 the Biden FCC implemented a new rule requiring that broadband providers include a “nutrition label for broadband", but a lack of enforcement made their impact lukewarm, and now the new FCC is looking to water down their effectiveness even more.
Another round of two-year ACLS fellowships has opened up that aims to take those with degrees in sociology, literature, political science, geography, history, and similar fields and place them with social justice-oriented nonprofits around the United States.
Bergen County, New Jersey officials say they’re making significant progress on their plan to dramatically expand Bergen County Fiber – the county’s new municipal fiber Institutional Network (I-Net) – with recently completed deployments in communities like Little Ferry and Lodi.
Chittenden County Communication Union District recently completed 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.
lllinois State Sen. Rachel Ventura, D-Joliet, has introduced legislation directing regulators to set broadband price protections for low-income residents, though the bill text leaves key details to be determined later. The measure joins those in other states, including Connecticut, Maryland, and Minnesota, that have introduced measures aimed at capping broadband prices for qualifying households.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed into law today new legislation that aims to provide tens of thousands of low-income households in “The Land of Enchantment” an Internet lifeline similar to the now-expired federal Affordable Connectivity Program. It makes the state the first to step up in the absence of federal action to support households that just can’t afford to pay for monthly service, and will directly support 173,000 households, offering up to a $30/month for qualified households to pay for Internet service.
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. 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.
We've been adding features and functionality to our brand new community network map to show in more detail where and what publicly owned networks are building around the United States. Today, we take a big step: adding Tribal networks serving their communities to the map.
Close to a 1,000 broadband-minded registrants attended yesterday’s NTIA listening session, surfacing suggestions on how to spend “non-deployment” funds. Given how many advocates attended yesterday’s listening session, NTIA officials agreed to hold yet another listening session next Wednesday, February 18.
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. Locals now have the options of multiple tiers of service across the five different Internet Service Providers.