Municipal Networks

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.

Nearly 1,000 miles of fiber-optic conduit is being laid in West Des Moines (IA), bringing lightning-fast internet to every home and business, thanks to a $60 million municipal bond and a novel public-private partnership. Laying fiber lines is costly, messy work: Companies offering fiber service must drill and install conduit on every street in the service area before beginning to offer service and recoup costs. In 2020, West Des Moines entered a partnership with Google Fiber.

In 2020, West Des Moines (IA) entered a partnership with Google Fiber, the super-fast internet service that Alphabet offers in several US cities. But unlike previous cities that have participated in the decade-old initiative, West Des Moines is building the fiber conduit network itself, in exchange for Google Fiber promising to lay its fiber lines in front of every home and business in the city — not just in areas the company believes will be profitable.

Vermont, one of the least populated states in the US, has to contend with plenty of broadband-related challenges. But state legislation and municipal providers have made bridging the digital divide a little easier. Robert Fish, the Deputy Director of the Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCBB), said Vermont’s issues are the same as those elsewhere in the country.

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.

The economics of rural broadband are challenging for private internet service providers (ISPs) and governments alike. The small populations spread out over large geographic areas make installing infrastructure extremely expensive and offer a limited customer base to offset the costs.

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.

In May 2021, the Florida Legislature passed the Florida Broadband Deployment Act of 2021, codifying the Florida Office of Broadband, which had been created in the previous year within the state's Department of Economic Opportunity.