Broadband Communities

The pandemic brought all kinds of innovative approaches to stubborn challenges: Small towns in Grafton County (NH) saw opportunities for business development, innovative school programs, and upgrading the way the local government functioned. But political will didn’t prevent the county from making these changes; poor internet service did. A lot of hard work, political capital and local and federal funding has been committed to improving Grafton County’s connectivity, resulting in the launch of broadband service in the Town of Bristol (NH) in September 2021.

As the CEO of NTCA, Shirley Bloomfield represents an organization that supports 850 independent telecom providers driving broadband service opportunities in the rural and small-town US. With more than 30 years of experience representing the nation’s most rural operators, Bloomfield is an expert on how federal communications policies can sustain the vitality of rural and remote communities and the benefits rural broadband networks offer to millions of US families, businesses and the national economy.

Visionary Broadband in Wyoming focuses on providing quality internet service by customizing products for underserved and rural markets, with a recent emphasis on fiber technology. The company was founded 27 years ago in a small, blue house by three friends who merely wanted internet access. Once they figured out how to get themselves connected, they began getting requests to help others get access as well. Twenty-seven years later, Visionary Broadband employs around 160 people. The idea that the internet could and should be available to anyone was the reason Visionary Broadband came to be.

Southern Tier 8 Regional Board, a multifaceted planning and development agency in New York state, sees broadband as an opportunity to improve the economic situation of the rural communities it serves. Jennifer Gregory, executive director of Southern Tier 8, recently announced Project Connect, an initiative to connect the agency’s entire eight-county region to high-speed broadband.

In Fort Collins (CO), Connexion broadband service broke ground in early 2019, but the desire to equip the city with service dates back more than a decade. Broadband discussions have been incorporated into Fort Collins' strategic plans since 2014. The city's plans now include broadband as a specific strategic objective: “Encourage the development of reliable, high-speed internet services throughout the community.” After years of thoughtful planning and community feedback, Fort Collins began building a fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network in February 2019.

Before 2020, explaining why the US needed to invest in expanding high-speed internet infrastructure was not always easy. Lawmakers or community leaders often did not understand or could not justify spending money on what can often be an expensive venture. Fast forward to 2021, and the level of broadband-related federal funding is mindboggling – upward of $370 billion. Now that the infrastructure bill passed, that figure rises by billions of dollars more.