Oswego County, NY officials are celebrating the award of a new $26 million New York State grant aimed at dramatically expanding affordable fiber access to long-underserved rural communities in the northwestern part of the state, just north of Syracuse.

According to the announcement by New York State Governor Kathy Hochul, Oswego’s latest grant award will help fund the deployment of 345 miles of new fiber infrastructure to largely rural unserved regions, helping to bring affordable broadband access to nearly 11,000 homes, businesses and community institutions across 22 towns and villages.

Oswego County will own the finished open access network and lease the fiber to Internet Service Providers (SPs), including Empire Access, "on a non-discriminatory and non-exclusive basis."

Empire, a family-owned ISP and named the fastest ISP in the nation by PCMag in 2021, currently offers local residents symmetrical 500 Megabit per second (Mbps) service for $50 a month; symmetrical 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) service for $65 a month; and symmetrical 2 Gbps service for $100 a month.

Officials in Carver County Minnesota continue to make great progress expanding affordable fiber access to the county of 111,000 residents, thanks largely to their publicly-owned open access fiber network CarverLink and their partnership with Metronet.

Since its inception in 2013, Carver County has leveraged public and private collaborations and funding with the goal of making symmetrical gigabit (1 Gbps) fiber available to all locations county wide. With the looming completion of its most recent $10.5 million expansion, CarverLink Fiber Manager Randy Lehs told ISLR they’re getting very close to their ultimate goal.

The county currently has ownership and use of nearly 1,200 miles of fiber throughout Carver County and southern Minnesota connecting more than 280 last mile public and community support locations. Many of these markets have no connectivity; many others are stuck on dated, sluggish, patchy connectivity from regional monopolies.

CarverLink doesn’t provide fiber directly to residents and businesses. Instead it long-ago established a partnership with Metronet (formerly Jaguar Communications), to provide gigabit fiber service to businesses and local residential households. Winner of PCMag's “Fastest Major ISP for 2023” award, Metronet provides multi-gigabit fiber to 300+ communities across 17 states.

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“CarverLink also oversees the availability of dark fiber within our network that is available to qualified service providers or other entities using dark fiber for new opportunities–open access, open interconnect fiber,” Lehs said.  “And through our open access fiber, services are also available from Broadband-MN and Arvig.”

A new provider named Halo Fiber is hoping to leverage hundreds of millions in recent Alabama middle mile broadband network grants to extend affordable fiber broadband to state residents long stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide.

The new provider says it’s not quite ready to reveal full launch details (including target markets, speeds, or pricing), but told ILSR it should enter its first four fiber markets later this year thanks in part to a flood of American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding in the state.

“We will be releasing pricing and target markets early this summer in May or June,” Halo Co-founder and CEO Brian Snider told ILSR. “Speeds are still being finalized as well but they will be symmetrical from 250 up and down to multi gig options.”

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Halo says its primary focus will be to partner with public and private entities to build fast and affordable broadband networks, empower access to better education, telehealth, and economic opportunities, and ensure quality customer service in neglected markets.

“Ten years ago, myself and other members of the Halo team worked on an initiative that identified infrastructure gaps across the entire state,” Snider said in additional comments to BamaBuzz.

“We found that was a big gap in middle mile connectivity – especially in Alabama’s Black Belt where there was almost no high speed infrastructure,” he added.

Nearly a fifth of Alabama residents – or just over a million people – lack access to reliable high speed Internet.

New York’s Municipal Infrastructure Program (MIP) continues to provide grant funds to build municipal broadband networks across the state, as state broadband officials recently announced the program’s largest round of funding to date.

As we reported in June, the MIP program – specifically designed to fund municipally-owned networks as part of the Empire State’s $1 billion ConnectALL initiative – awarded $70 million to a half dozen projects earlier this summer.

Then, earlier this month, another $140 million in grant awards were announced for an additional six projects, promising to deliver “more than 1,200 miles of publicly-owned fiber optic infrastructure and wireless hubs, connecting (passing) over 60,000 homes and businesses with affordable, symmetric service – offering equal download and upload speeds at rates below regional averages.”

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The funding will be used to expand broadband infrastructure (and seed competition) in the Central New York, Finger Lakes, Mohawk Valley, North Country, Mid-Hudson and Western New York regions.

In a prepared press statement, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul characterized the grants as “a transformative step forward in our mission to connect every New Yorker to affordable, high-speed Internet.”

Erie County, New York’s ErieNet broadband initiative is poised to begin construction in Buffalo, NY, after the Buffalo Common Council recently passed a resolution approving the Telecommunications License Agreement with ErieNet LDC. The approval is a major step toward bringing affordable next-gen broadband access to long-neglected parts of Western New York.

ErieNet is a nonprofit, local development corporation (LDC), launched in September 2022, designed to construct and manage a municipal-based open-access fiber optic backbone. ECC Technologies has been chosen to handle sales, marketing, and tech support operations for the network.

“Construction has already begun for ErieNet with underground conduit installations, and utility work necessary to make utility poles ready for ErieNet fiber optic cable attachments,” ECC Technologies’ VP Matthew Crider tells ISLR. “We expect segments of our network to come online beginning in March of 2025; and have the ErieNet 400+ mile open access network substantially built by the end of 2025.”

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“Bringing high-quality broadband to Erie County begins in the City of Buffalo, and the Common Council’s approval opens up the way to make that happen,” Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said in a prepared statement.

Crider told ILSR that the current construction budget for the network is approximately $34 million, funded through American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) broadband grants.

Canada’s biggest telecom giant has acquired Ziply Fiber – and a sizable swath of municipal operation agreements for open access fiber scattered across the Pacific Northwest. Bell Canada and Ziply’s joint announcement indicates that the full deal will be around $5 billion Canadian, plus an additional $2 billion in acquired debt.

The acquisition could help accelerate Ziply’s planned expansion across the Pacific Northwest, where the company’s fiber network currently passes 1.3 million locations across Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington State.

At the same time, Bell Canada’s history of anti-competitive behavior could herald a culture shift at the ascending provider. Ziply and Bell Canada’s rapid-fire acquisition of smaller providers across the Pacific Northwest could also risk undermining the pro-competitive benefits of the kind of open access policies Ziply previously embraced.

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Ziply was formed when WaveDivision Capital purchased Frontier Communications’ Pacific Northwest operations in 2020. It has quickly become a major player across the four states thanks in part to numerous public private partnerships with municipalities, and a 2022 announcement of $450 million in new private sector funding.

A recent U.S. News And World Report survey of U.S. broadband subscribers shows that Americans are increasingly paying more money for broadband access.

The survey also indicates broad public support for the recently defunded Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), and other government-backed efforts to cap soaring broadband subscription costs.

The organization surveyed 2,500 adults from the country’s five most populous states; 500 broadband subscribers each in California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Not too surprisingly, the survey found that consumers consistently are paying more for broadband than the advertised price, either thanks to steady rate hikes, or the broad use of often sneaky, hidden fees to jack up the advertised cost of service.

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Most Americans remain trapped under a monopoly or duopoly for next-generation broadband (broadband defined as faster than 100/20 megabits per second, or Mbps) access. This lack of competition results in high prices, slow speeds, spotty access, substandard customer service, and an increased occurrence of net neutrality, privacy, or other anti-consumer violations.

The survey found the average U.S. subscriber bill at sign up is now $81 – up from the $77 average monthly price seen in the outlet’s April 2024 survey report. But the average broadband subscription cost when the bill actually arrives was now $98 per month; up from $89 just six months earlier. For most, $100 broadband access is right around the corner.

Placerville, California will soon be a place with a municipally-owned open-access fiber network as the city of 10,000 looks to provide its residents and businesses with local choice and more affordable broadband service.

The years-long effort was launched after frustration with what the city’s 2021 Broadband Master Plan described as the “equivalent of an ISP (Comcast) Monopoly.”

“Because of this,” the plan noted, “residents and businesses in Placerville are exposed to the common limitations of monopolies” – a high-priced reality that prompted 98 percent of city survey respondents to say “yes” to a municipally-owned network.

Now, three years after that report was published – and thanks to a $20.1 million award from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) Last Mile Federal Funding Account (FFA) grant program – a city that was once nicknamed “Hangtown” is now set to cut the noose of the ISP monopoly.

Among the burgeoning number of Tribal networks being built across Indian Country, a new fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network spanning the Southern Ute Indian Reservation is unique.

When service was lit up in Ignacio, Colorado in May, the network became the only open access network owned by a Tribal government, providing its residents with a choice between two different Internet Service Providers (ISP) offering lightning-fast connection speeds.

Five years in the making, the Southern Ute network is not only the first Tribally-owned open access network, it is also among the first of the new fiber projects funded by the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (TBCP) to start offering services.

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With a strong commitment from Tribal leadership, savvy decision-making, and strategic vision, the Tribe has been able to fundamentally reshape the broadband market in its region, increasing speeds and competition while lowering prices.

Slow Speeds and High Prices Fuel Mission to ‘Bust That Monopoly’

As with many other Tribally-owned networks, the Southern Ute Indian Tribe’s broadband journey began with a recognition that the existing telecommunications infrastructure on the Reservation simply could not meet the needs of the modern moment.

Tribal Council Chairman Melvin J. Baker tells ILSR that many in Tribal leadership “realized we’ve needed it for quite some time.”