The popular community provider celebrates rapid growth rate and says that ongoing community support means the city is on track to repay its construction bond by the 2029 due date. NextLight currently passes about 90 percent of the 47,000 premises in Longmont.

The Arkansas State Broadband Office continues to leverage American Rescue Plan Act funds to drive affordable fiber access into underserved parts of the Natural State. Three funding rounds are winding their way to completion, as fiber connectivity is being made available to rural markets for the first time, with a heavy reliance on local cooperatives.

Volunteer Energy Cooperative in Birchwood Tennessee says it’s leveraging American Rescue Plan Act funding to expand affordable fiber access into long underserved parts of The Volunteer State. VEC has begun construction on a new fiber expansion plan that will bring affordable fiber access to nearly 300 homes in Birchwood thanks to a $615,617 ARPA grant.

As digital inclusion advocates look to get their bearings amid an all-out assault on federal broadband funding programs, the upcoming March 13 Building For Digital Equity livestream offers a port in the storm. “Charting the Course: Adapting to Policy Shifts While Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize” promises to bring hundreds of digital inclusion practitioners together to regroup and recalibrate while hearing from those working in the trenches still to adequately address broadband access challenges across the nation.

The broadband industry keeps trying to get the Supreme Court to help them, and the Supreme Court keeps saying no. The high court said again Monday that it will not hear the industry’s challenge to a New York law capping broadband prices for low-income customers.

The Maine Connectivity Authority continues to make steady inroads bridging the state’s long standing digital divide on the back of federal grants and a public private-partnership between Lincoln County and Consolidated Communications. In January, Fidium announced it was beginning construction on the project, which should bring fiber connectivity to 8,300 homes and businesses.

At the “Municipal Broadband and Innovative Financing Models: Unlocking Economic Growth” webinar today, experts provided an inside look at how successful community broadband networks can be funded. Co-hosted by ILSR's Community Broadband Networks initiative and the American Association for Public Broadband, the four-person panel provided key insights on finanacing network construction even with the uncertainty now swirling around the federal BEAD program.

A New England ISP trade group is pushing back against a Massachusetts bill that seeks to cap broadband rates for low-income households.

Cold Springs Rancheria of Mono Indians was among the applicants celebrating a winning grant application in the California Public Utilities Commission’s (CPUC) latest Federal Funding Account (FFA) announcement. The grant marks the eighth successful application by a Tribal nation in this program and another in a long list of community-focused projects led by public entities like municipalities.

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. 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: making symmetrical gigabit fiber available to all locations county wide.

The webinar will focus on the variety of ways publicly-owned broadband networks can be financed and feature municipal broadband providers and financing experts who have successfully navigated the maze of municipal finance. Co-hosted by AAPB Executive Director Gigi Sohn and Sean Gonsalves from ILSR's Community Broadband Networks Initiative, organizers are encouraging attendees to bring their questions, as the agenda aims to foster information-sharing and actionable insight.

Alabama's open-access middle mile network spurs last mile investments and competition. Alabama has already invested over $324 million of federal American Rescue Plan Act funding on middle-mile infrastructure. Of that, $264 million has been earmarked to deploy 5,000 miles of middle-mile infrastructure – reaching all 67 Alabama counties – as part of the Alabama Fiber Network.