Electronic Frontier Foundation

Our local and regional governments have a responsibility to provide equitable, accessible, and affordable fast-internet service to every home and business—just like electricity, water, and waste removal. Portland (OR) has existing infrastructure that can be used to provide affordable access to fast internet for all Portlanders: a publicly owned dark fiber network used for essential city services—IRNE (Integrated Regional Network Enterprise) Net.

New York City is shutting down NYC Mesh, a community-run low-cost broadband network that provided affordable internet access to underserved areas. The network relied on a decentralized model where users helped expand it.

In January 2020, former-Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-NY) announced New York City’s Internet Master Plan, setting a path to deliver broadband for low-income New Yorkers by investing in public fiber infrastructure.

The state of California is primed to bring 21st-century fiber access at affordable rates to every Californian. All of the recent state and federal efforts will help bring every Californian affordable fiber internet access. But a bill in the California legislature threatens to undo all of that good work. A.B.

There is a lot to appreciate in the recently published Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) by the National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA). It is arguably the first federal government proposal that seeks to promote infrastructure policies focused on the future, rather than the usual subsidizing “good enough for now” access. That means that the US government, or at least part of it, finally recognizes what appears obvious: that the future of internet access is in fiber.