Half of Connecticut says it wants fiber-optic Internet -- and soon

Forty-six Connecticut towns said that they'd like to work with broadband companies so that residents can access gigabit speeds -- that's roughly 100 times what the average American household gets today. The list includes some of Connecticut's biggest towns, such as Bridgeport, New Haven and Hartford. But it also includes smaller municipalities where getting next-gen services might prove more difficult, such as Simsbury and Waterford. Although the state has fiber-optic cables connecting all 169 towns, that infrastructure typically ends in nodes serving the local town hall or police and fire stations. The next step will be to connect individual homes to that network. As many as 1.8 million Connecticut residents would get access to fiber if public-private partnership plans move forward.