News

The northern Minnesota telephone cooperative, which serves 30,000 members across its 6,000-square-mile service area, has announced it is returning over $3 million to its members this year. This most recent payout isn’t Paul Bunyan Communications first, or largest. In 2022, members were returned $6.3 million and in 2018 it was $2.2 million.

Communities looking to leverage American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding for broadband or other local infrastructure need to act soon or risk losing access to a once-in-a-generation funding resource. Most ARPA recipients seem well aware of the deadline, but data suggests more than a few communities could drop the ball.

The Maine Connectivity Authority (MCA) has unveiled $9.6 million in new grant awards to help bring affordable fiber to over 15,000 homes and businesses across 12 widely underserved communities in the Pine Tree state. The grants will primarily be focused on leveraging public-private partnerships to drive fiber into unserved locations in Waldo and Lincoln Counties.

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) has announced a new initiative, Seven Star Communities, to highlight the excellent work being done by Native communities to “strengthen self-determination and close the digital divide through sustainable digital inclusion work.” Increasingly, Native nations are advancing digital inclusion priorities and programs that foreground self-determination and sovereignty.

Oakland, California will use ARPA grant funds to construct a city-owned, open-access, hybrid middle mile/last mile fiber network that will support the city housing authority's “Free Internet Initiative.” The Oakland project not only paves the way for the city to connect 14 community anchor institutions (CAIs) and nine public safety buildings, it will also expand high-speed Internet access to thousands of unserved and underserved addresses in West and East Oakland.

The New Mexico Office of Broadband Access and Expansion (OBAE) has awarded $1.4 million in grants to 15 counties, tribal communities, cooperatives, and municipalities for planning, engineering and grant writing to expand broadband access. The funding not only allows these communities to begin analyzing their local connectivity needs in more detail, it potentially opens the door to helping them apply for more than $675 million in BEAD (Broadband Equity, Access, and Development) grants.

Fort Collins, Colorado's award-winning municipal fiber network is celebrating its growth by giving away a year of free Internet access to 20 randomly chosen subscribers. Buoyed by its successes, Fort Collins has since started striking intergovernmental agreements with unserved neighboring communities in Larimer County in a bid to further extend affordable access to locals long-neglected by regional monopolies.

With the Federal Communications Commission preparing a biennial report to Congress assessing competition in communications, some industry stakeholders have voiced concern over the growing dominance of a few major players.

As Brownsville, Texas continues to make progress on an ambitious revitalization initiative, it is now transforming the digital landscape along the border with a citywide fiber network to bring fast, reliable, and affordable Internet service to its nearly 200,000 residents. The effort is being launched on the back of a city-owned middle mile fiber backbone and a partnership with Lit Fiber to build out last mile service, operating as Lit Fiber BTX.

ILSR's Senior GIS Analyst Christine Parker will be flying into Seattle, Washington this week to join a breakout session at the annual gathering of open source data scientists.

EMPOWER Broadband, a subsidiary of Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative, is asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to waive financing requirements attached to the provider’s takeover of thousands of subsidized broadband locations from RiverStreet Networks. It’s a move the cooperative says will save it millions of dollars in errant additional penalties and puts a spotlight on the ongoing challenges facing a program that has long been criticized for dysfunction and mismanagement.

In the latest episode of the Building for Digital Equity Podcast, ILSR's Digital Equity Coordinator Jordan Pittman sits down with advocates from the Reproductive Health Initiative for Telehealth Equity and Solutions (RHITES) to discuss the importance of addressing barriers to telehealth.

On July 24, 2024, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 9-7 that the Universal Service Fund is unconstitutional. The decision throws a whole raft of federal broadband programs - including those which help schools pay for connectivity, those which help homes pay for home Internet access, and more - into a state of uncertainty.

Central Virginia Electric Cooperative’s (CVEC) Firefly Broadband subsidiary has been awarded a new $12.2 million grant from the state of Virginia. The award will help fund a major update to an already massive effort to extend affordable broadband to vast swaths of rural Virginia. The $12.2 million in Virginia Telecommunication Initiative (VATI) grant funding will be used to help fund a broader $48.6 million partnership with Rappahannock Electric Cooperative, Dominion Energy, and county governments.

A new report published today by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) reveals how the sovereignty of Tribal Nations and their own efforts to solve connectivity challenges on Tribal lands can be undermined by the poor design and maze of bureaucracy associated with some federal broadband programs.

Consumer Reports’ latest survey of the most popular ISPs in America is once again dominated by smaller providers and community-owned and operated broadband networks. The magazine’s semi-paywalled report measured the opinions of 48,000 readers on a 100 point scale across four criteria: value for money, connection reliability, customer service, and speed.

Imperial, Lassen, and Plumas Counties are among the first recipients of California’s $2 billion Last Mile Federal Funding Account Grant Program (FFA). The cities of Oakland, Fremont, and San Francisco have also been awarded significant state awards. All told, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) awarded 11 FFA grants totaling over $86.6 million.

Vermont CUD Northwest Fiberworx (NWFX) has received a $20.2 million infusion in state American Rescue Plan Act dollars to extend affordable fiber broadband into long-underserved regions of the Green Mountain State. Its latest build will connect 3,800 unserved and underserved households in Franklin and Grand Isle counties in the Northwest part of the state.

As states gear up to administer federal BEAD funds from the bipartisan infrastructure law, a handful of states are already making significant investments in municipal broadband using federal Rescue Plan dollars. California, Maine, Vermont, and New York have each established grant programs that center municipal broadband projects (mostly fiber builds) – with New York being the most recent state to announce more than $70 million in awards through its ConnectALL Municipal Infrastructure Grant Program (MIP).

The call for applications for the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society Marjorie and Charles Benton Opportunity Fund is open. Deadline is August 31.