For years, the conventional playbook for communities stuck with slow, expensive Internet service has been to wait. Wait for the incumbent cable or phone company to upgrade connections, wait for a federal grant, wait for someone else to solve the problem. 

Now, a growing number of communities have decided they are done waiting.

And on July 7 at 12 noon ET, the next installment in a joint webinar series from the American Association for Public Broadband (AAPB) and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) will showcase a new financing model being put into action that allows for communities to control their digital futures.

The free, one-hour live webinar to be broadcast on ILSR's YouTube channel — "Control + Shift + ALTernative: Building Community-Owned Fiber" — will go behind the scenes of two real-world community fiber projects to tease out the practical lessons that other communities can learn from.

Registration for the webinar is now open here.

The webinar will be moderated by Gigi Sohn, one of the country's foremost telecommunications policy experts and head of AAPB, and Sean Gonsalves, Senior Writer and Associate Director for Communications with ILSR's Community Broadband Networks Initiative.

Together they will lead a conversation with four practitioners who have been in the trenches of community broadband development: Jim Cannon, CEO of Pivot-Tech; Scott Corbitt, General Manager of the Port of Lewiston; Christina Burns, Kendall County Administrator; and Chris Perlitz, Managing Director at Municipal Capital Markets Group, Inc.

Frustrated by years of substandard broadband service from regional telecom monopolies, Kendall County, Illinois residents have joined the growing chorus of Americans that are tackling the problem head on by building their own better, faster, more affordable fiber networks.

The Kendall County network, part of a public-private partnership (PPP or P3) with Pivot-Tech, is being funded by a tax-free revenue bond.

Kendall County officials tell ILSR that the full cost of the network, which will include private investment from Pivot-Tech, is expected to ultimately be $67 million, serving more than 13,000 locations county wide.

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The first phase of the network build will consist of a combination of fixed wireless and fiber last and middle middle connectivity, supported by $15 million in state broadband grants made possible by 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) legislation. Construction is slated to begin this fall, and officials say the county will own the finished network.  

“The network is a combination of fiber and fixed wireless, with the goal to serve as many customers by fiber as possible,” Kendall County Administrator Christina Burns told ILSR. “The fixed wireless access count planned in phase one will be approximately 1,900. The remainder will be fiber to the premises.”

County officials are still finalizing the selection of a consumer-facing ISP.

“We have identified an ISP and are working through the details,” Burns said. “We do still plan for the network to be open access, hoping to bring more ISPs on in the future.”

Like so many communities we cover, the county’s foray into community broadband was forged by decades of local frustration with limited local broadband competition, high prices, and patchy service, which was painfully highlighted during COVID lockdowns.