Some of the nation’s leading thinkers and doers in the community broadband sector will connect and collaborate in the nation’s capital for the inaugural Community First: The Future of Public Broadband Conference and Hill Day next week.

Slated for May 14 and 15, the two-day conference is being hosted by the American Association for Public Broadband (AAPB) and New America Open Technology Institute (OTI), in partnership with ILSR's Community Broadband Networks Initiative, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, and the Community Broadband Action Network.

The in-person gathering will bring together public broadband champions, community leaders, policymakers, and industry experts to focus on strategy and advocacy in the face of potentially dramatic changes to the $42.5 billion BEAD program – the single-largest federal investment to ensure every household in the nation has access to high speed Internet connectivity.

Registration and tickets are still available here.

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With the rise of community-owned broadband networks and cooperatives now flourishing across the nation, organizers are hoping to create “an essential space to share best practices, discuss financing, shape public policy, and support the development and expansion of public broadband networks.”

Baltimore activists and leaders say the city is making steady progress in efforts to bridge the digital divide in the city of 565,000. The efforts have culminated in several grant-fueled initiatives to deliver fiber and wireless to city apartment complexes, a city middle-mile network, and a looming partnership with regional providers to further expand affordable access.

When we last checked in with Baltimore, the city had just doled out $2 million of its American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding to bring fiber to 12 new city apartment buildings. The deployment is in partnership with Waves, a nonprofit formerly known as Project Waves.

Waves was first launched in 2018 in direct response to the Trump FCC’s repeal of net neutrality and the general failures of federal telecom policy to address digital inequity. Project Waves (profiled by ILSR in 2023) initially used Point-to-Multipoint wireless connectivity to deliver free wireless broadband service to about 300 multi-dwelling unit (MDU) residents.

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Now Baltimore Director of Broadband and Digital Equity Kenya Asli tells Government Technology the city is putting the finishing touches on a Request for Proposal (RFP) to strike a new public-private-partnership with an as-yet-unselected broadband provider. The deal should further expand fiber access to unserved and underserved parts of the city.

“Folks want more options, and so we are bringing in more options,” Asli said.

*The following story by Broadband Breakfast Reporter Jake Neenan was originally published here.

States are moving ahead with their Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program processes after the Commerce Department extended for 90 days the deadlines for final spending plans.

“In Michigan, we are in the thick of reviewing, scoring, and deconflicting 392 applications that we received in our first grant round,” said Eric Frederick, head of the state’s High-Speed Internet Office. “It’s a very busy time for us.”

He spoke Wednesday on  a Fiber Broadband Association webinar.

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The state received 32 applications to serve more than 78 percent of its 248,000 eligible locations in its first round, which ended April 9 and was restricted to fiber projects. Frederick said the state is planning to start discussing grant agreements with successful round one applicants “within the next month or so.”

Michigan is also planning to release a draft of its BEAD grant agreement, the contract grant winners will ultimately sign with the state, this week for public comment, Frederick said. The state was allocated more than $1.5 billion from the $42.45 billion program.

The Trump administration on Tuesday gave all states a 90-day extension on their deadlines to submit their lists of selected projects for approval, documents that were originally due one year after a state’s initial BEAD implementation proposal was given the federal green light. The National Telecommunications Administration, the Commerce agency handling BEAD, said states could require additional time to submit those proposals in light of forthcoming rule changes.

Superior, Wisconsin officials say they’re getting very close to lighting up the first subscribers of a city-owned fiber network that will finally bring affordable, next-generation fiber access to the city’s long under-served community of 26,000.

“We have phase 1 in the ground and are working with Nokia right now for final configuration and testing,” Stephanie Becken, broadband manager for ConnectSuperior, tells ILSR.

“It's our plan to have our sign-up website ready in the next two weeks, as our two ISPs finalize their connections and offerings pages,” she says. “I'm hopeful we'll have drops and initial service started by mid-May, but we may be looking at June—there's always something!”

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In 2020 the city passed a resolution declaring fiber essential infrastructure. In 2021, the city council voted overwhelmingly to move forward on a deployment master plan developed for the city by EntryPoint Networks.

In 2023 the Superior city council voted 8-1 to approve deployment in the project’s first pilot area: a swath of around 830 homes and businesses lodged between Tower Avenue, Belknap Street, and North 21st streets. But the phase 1 target area has expanded a little since as the city has moved forward on logistics and planning.

Vermont’s Communications Union Districts (CUDs), which were the subject of a recently released ILSR report, continue to make steady inroads in delivering high-quality broadband access to long-neglected rural Vermont residents.

In 2021 the Vermont legislature passed Act 71, ensuring CUDs would play a key role in expanding fiber access in the Green Mountain state. In Vermont, municipally-led CUDs – municipal entities created by two or more towns with a goal of building communication infrastructure – can legally fund needed broadband expansions through debt, grants, and donations – but not taxes, though they themselves are tax-exempt nonprofits.

The CUD model allows municipalities to bond together to tackle broadband network deployments that might otherwise prove too costly or logistically difficult if attempted alone.

The results have been transformative for state residents long underserved or completely unserved by the state’s regional incumbent monopoly providers. Locals at times have likened the transformation to moving out of the “dark ages.”

Much of Vermont’s $150 million ARPA-based broadband package went toward assisting CUDs in a state where 85 percent of municipalities and 90 percent of all underserved locations fall under an existing CUD’s jurisdiction.