Fiber Broadband Association

The broadband industry’s policy environment has been undergoing a historic transformation. Unprecedented federal investment has been met with growing state and local support and a new drive by private industry to fund and upgrade millions of new connections and deploy much-needed backhaul. The surest way to ensure the United States maintains its competitive edge is to start by ensuring every community is connected to high-speed internet that will allow every American to fully participate in society. It best aligns with the modern concept of reliable, scalable broadband.

AI is no longer just chips, models, and power. As GPUs double in power every year and clusters scale in size and geography, bandwidth explodes, latency tightens, and inference moves to the edge—fiber becomes part of the AI machine itself. This paper introduces a unifying framework: AI as a living digital organism, with fiber serving as its nervous and circulatory systems.

As digital access becomes essential for education, healthcare, economic opportunity, and cultural preservation, the digital divide is deepening existing inequities in underserved areas, particularly in Tribal communities. These gaps in connectivity limit access to critical services and opportunities, reinforcing long-standing barriers to participation in the digital economy. Against this backdrop, fiber broadband emerges as a critical solution.

Flagstaff (AZ) tells the story of how one city turned a broadband gap into a model for municipal fiber deployment. Long underserved by incumbent providers, Flagstaff recognized that reliable, high-speed connectivity was essential not just for city operations, but for the economic future of the broader region—enabling remote work, telemedicine, education, and business growth across rural northern Arizona.

When Virginia first invested $1 million into broadband in 2017, it wasn’t leading the country. It was testing what a state-led model could look like. Today, Virginia has secured $545 million in Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment funding and is overseeing nearly $1.5 billion in total federal broadband investment. But the story isn’t just about dollars. It’s about execution. Through the Virginia Telecommunications Initiative, Dr. Tamarah Holmes, Director of the Office of Broadband, helped grow a modest state program into a $750 million deployment engine.

The Fiber Broadband Association partnered with Cartesian to research the cost of deploying fiber in communities and environments in the United States, using phone interviews, online surveys, Federal Communications Commission data, and other literature to provide context for the scale and pace of deployment. Selected highlights from the study include:

The Fiber Broadband Association announced its annual Fiber Deployment Survey, performed by RVA LLC Market Research & Consulting, revealed that 2025 set an all-time record for fiber broadband growth. Fiber broadband deployments reached 11.8 million U.S.

Dr. Adam Dewbury, Ph.D., and Shaniqua Corley-Moore from The Center on Rural Innovation, joined Gary Bolton to discuss The Practitioner’s Guide to Rural Digital Inclusion. Their conversation explored how communities can move beyond simply connecting residents to broadband and ensure they have the skills and support to use it meaningfully. Dr.

Permitting plays a critical role in the pace and cost of broadband deployment. While essential for protecting public safety, infrastructure, and the environment, local permitting often causes significant delays, added expenses, and in some cases, stalled projects. This white paper from the Fiber Broadband Association’s Deployment Specialists Committee examines permitting through “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” highlighting how well-structured processes can support responsible builds, while fragmented systems and outdated practices create major barriers to expanding fiber networks.