News

The U.S. Department of Treasury broke new ground in federal broadband policy when the agency released guidelines governing the $10 billion Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund. The Treasury's guidance directs applicants to incorporate plans in their project proposals to address long-overlooked barriers to broadband adoption, and gives state and local governments increased flexibility to decide how to spend the relief funds. 

We are excited to welcome Christine Parker, PhD to the Community Broadband Networks initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, where she will serve as a GIS and Data Visualization Specialist.

Join us live on Thursday, November 4th at 5pm ET for Episode 24 of the Connect This!

UTOPIA Fiber continues to grow and is now exporting its expertise into Bozeman, Montana – one of the fastest-growing cities of its size and often listed among the best places to live in the country.

Across New England, local-controlled, publicly-owned Internet infrastructure is on the rise -- from Bar Harbor, Maine to the Berkshires of Massachusetts. In Connecticut, however, it’s a different story. The Constitution State is a municipal broadband desert.

Once known as the center of bowling ball manufacturing, producing 60 percent of the world’s bowling balls, today Hopkinsville, KY (pop. 31,580) is on the verge of becoming a kingpin in a whole different lane: producing gig-speed broadband.

Calloway County (pop.

A month ago, President Biden visited the city of Golden, Colorado to tout his Build Back Better Agenda, which includes a bipartisan infrastructure package that invests $65 billion to expand access to high-speed I

Throughout the pandemic, the Insure the Uninsured Project (ITUP), a California-based nonprofit health policy institute, heard from community health care organizations across the state about a persistent problem: the digital divide was, and is, a major barrier to accessing telehealth services.

Earlier this month, a plan to bring fiber connectivity to four towns in Knox County, Maine (pop. 39,500) spearheaded by the MidCoast Internet Development Corporation (MIDC) was dealt a major blow when Knox County Commissioners denied MIDC’s request to use the county's American Rescue Plan funds to pay for network construction.

Situated in rural Central New York, Madison County (pop. 71,000) was named in honor of America’s fourth President, James Madison. But it was the region’s history of growing hops for beer that really put the county on the map.

Join us live on Monday, October 25th at 5pm ET for Episode 23 of the Connect This! Show, where co-hosts Christopher and Travis Carter (USI Fiber) will be joined by Neil Mylet and Deb Simpier (Althea Networks) to talk about grassroots networking.

With the pandemic-induced rise in remote work, distance learning, e-commerce, and telehealth, a new report published by the Urban Land Institute (ULI), sheds light on how the demand for high-speed Internet connectivity has “helped shift the real estate industry itself from thinking just in terms of physical space to also considering how to engage within a virtual

More than $34.6 million in COVID relief funds were awarded in August to 15 Minnesota cities and counties across the state as part of the Small Cities Coronavirus Community Development Block Grant Program (CDBG-CV).

Countywide Internet access is no longer up in the air for Washtenaw County, Michigan residents.

North Louisiana has more premises unserved with high-speed Internet access than any other region of the state. In an effort to bring reliable Internet access to its members who have gone without service, directors of the Northeast Louisiana Power Cooperative (NELPCO) recently agreed to pursue a $54 million fiber buildout. 

In September, we wrote about the elimination of significant state barriers in Arkansas and Washington as legislators at the state level pushed to overturn the laws protecting monopoly providers which prevent localities from building and operating their own broadband infrastructure. 

With support from the Internet Society, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance has produced a video series to help tribes meet the requirements set by the FCC in getting their 2.5GHz networks up and running. Featuring participants from this summer's inaugural Tribal Wireless Bootcamp, the series offers an introduction to key terms before walking viewers through the necessary steps from inception to connecting end users to a new network.

Join us live this Thursday, October 14th at 5pm ET for Episode 22 of the Connect This! Show, where co-hosts Christopher and Travis Carter (USI Fiber) will be joined by Dennis Pappas (Longmont, Colorado) and Christy Batts (Clarksville, Tennessee) to talk about large municipalities successfully deploying broadband infrastructure for an array of community benefits.