Local/Municipal

The U.S. Conference of Mayors adopted the following resolutions:

Growth in neighborhoods and cities means that there is a lot of stress on the existing utilities. As you might expect, the over-taxed utilities are showing the strain. Our telecom networks are not immune from growth problems. The Charter cable network clearly has occasional problems. It’s not hard to imagine that there are neighborhoods where the cable network is overloaded due to growth.

Flume, a service provider operating in New York City, metro Los Angeles, and Connecticut, has a rather unique business model. It offers fiber broadband but has very little fiber infrastructure of its own. “In the metro core, there’s a lot of overbuilt fiber,” said Prashanth Vijay, Flume co-founder and CEO. In some cases, the fiber may have been installed by a utility company, cell tower company, or another entity that doesn’t offer residential broadband.

Former FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly called the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) "the best mechanism we've had to date" for subsidizing low-income broadband. But he added that the current Congress is unlikely to pass funding for the ACP without changes to the program.  According to O'Rielly, Congress will want to address waste, fraud, and abuse with the program, and likely limit its eligibility. By some estimates, up to 40% of Americans currently qualify for the program. "That's probably not suitable for policymakers that I talked to on Capitol Hill.

Block Island, located just 12 miles south of mainland Rhode Island, has launched a municipal broadband network in partnership with Sertex Broadband Solutions. Dubbed BroadbandBI, the gigabit fiber network will power the town of New Shoreham, which has a population of roughly 1,000 people. New Shoreham initially struck a partnership with Sertex in 2017 to build a municipal broadband network serving community anchor institutions, such as schools, libraries, and hospitals. That network was completed in 2019.

The bulk of Google Fiber's buildouts is focused on cities and towns that are getting broadband service from incumbent cable operators and telephone companies.

June 2023 marks four years since the completion of backbone construction and lighting of all phases of the Westminster Fiber Network (WFN) project in Westminster, Maryland. Another milestone will soon be achieved: Subscriber growth will begin generating sufficient revenue for the city to cover the debt service on the general obligation bonds sold to finance the project.

A North Carolina company is becoming recognized not only for its network expansion throughout the eastern part of the state but for its unique public-private partnerships that are bringing fiber-to-the-home in rural, underserved counties.

Chattanooga, Tennessee, is considered ahead of the game with multi-gig connectivity, as in 2022 it introduced citywide 25-gig service for consumers and businesses.