Local/Municipal

The Appalachian Regional Commission awarded $6.3 million through its new Appalachian Regional Initiative for Stronger Economies (ARISE) funding opportunity to Connect Humanity for a project that will help 50 underserved communities in every subregion of Appalachia plan for broadband access and growth. Working with local

As the January 13 deadline looms for states to challenge the current Federal Communications Commission broadband coverage map, many states are asking for more time. I'm starting to wonder, however, whether more time is actually all that important. The FCC process is NOT building a location-level map of actual delivered broadband speeds, but rather a map of the performance that providers say they can deliver if a customer requests it. So let's try to put all of this together and see what it means. For me, a few key takeaways stand out (All of this is not to say that state efforts to understa

Arlington County, Virginia, is surveying residents and businesses to understand how they use broadband internet service and if their access can be improved. The survey is part of a $250,000 study that could inform ways to bridge the digital divide between residents with good internet connectivity and those without it, using the county’s existing fiber-optic network, dubbed ConnectArlington.

It is unfortunate timing that the new Federal Communications Commission broadband map was issued in the middle of the process of trying to determine the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant funding. Congress said that the amount of funding that will go to each state must be based upon the FCC map – and the first draft is clearly flawed. However, assuming that that grant funding question gets resolved somehow, there remains the bigger issue of whether the new FCC map will ever accurately portray broadband availability.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D-NY) has suspended the city’s Internet Master Plan, creating uncertainty for New Yorkers waiting for fiber broadband and also for the vendors tapped to deploy fiber and deliver service. T-Mobile, Starry and Flume were among the 12 companies named by former Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-NY) when he announced the $157 million plan in 2021. At that time, Mayor de Blasio said the plan would incentivize high-quality affordable internet at scale and help reverse New York’s digital divide.

Nearly 15 years after the first Colorado community opted out of a state law prohibiting local governments from providing or investing in broadband internet service, 121 cities and towns in the state have followed suit, including four more communities in the November 2022 election. The result is the installation of hundreds of miles of new fiber-optic lines throughout the state, from tiny Wray near the Kansas border to even smaller Mountain Village near Telluride — and dozens of communities in between. The big pipes delivering data to homes and businesses mean an increasing number of Colorad

Governor Kathy Hochul (D-NY) announced the completion of New York's first-ever municipal broadband network as a major milestone for the state's ConnectALL program.

When it comes to affordable broadband, Vermont has always been a trailblazer.

CenturyLink customers in Seattle and Portland receive wide-ranging levels of service for the same price, with poorer residents and people of color more likely to be burdened by slow speeds. Seattle had the worst disparities among cities examined in the Pacific Northwest. About half of its lower-income areas were offered slow internet, compared with just 19% of upper-income areas.