Regional

After a regional effort to bring broadband to the lakes region west of Augusta (ME) fell through, the town of Vienna, population nearly 600, decided to go it alone. Around five years ago, major broadband providers, including Consolidated Communication,s declined to extend cables there, citing its small population. In March 2023, voters approved a municipal network. On August 1, 2025, Vienna Broadband will switch on for its first customers. It opens with new competition.

Surf Internet is kicking off construction of a new fiber-optic network that will bring high-speed internet to 145 addresses across the Village of Troy Grove (IL)––including apartment units, municipal buildings, businesses, and dozens of single-family homes. Construction is expected to be completed later in the summer of 2025.

BoomerTECH Adventures and Coastal Maine Regional Broadband (CMRB) held their first round of free workshops providing digital literacy training and education with the goal of helping Midcoast libraries and organizations support their clients to access and utilize high-speed internet effectively.

Peoria County (IL) has launched a Digital Equity Pilot program designed to provide low-cost or no-cost internet access to eligible low-income households. The initiative is funded through a $125,000 grant from the Illinois Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity. The importance of reliable internet access became undeniable during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it shifted from being a luxury to a necessity for daily life.

The third grant program funded by the Digital Equity Act of 2021 is the Digital Equity Competitive Grant Program. This information can guide organizations as they Get Ready to prepare their applications. The grant's purpose is to create the conditions where individuals and communities have the information technology capacity needed for full participation in the society and economy of the United States. Allowable uses of grant awards include:

In 2019, the Vermont Department of Public Service found that nearly a quarter of Vermont addresses lacked service that met the then federal benchmarks for broadband speeds (25/3 megabits per second, or Mbps). The COVID-19 pandemic only underscored the urgent need in a state that has consistently ranked near the bottom of connectivity comparisons over the past decade. Vermonters saw a lack of interest from private providers to invest in the sparsely populated rural state and recognized that communities needed to address the problem themselves.

NEK Broadband and CVFiber announce a preliminary plan to join the two Communications Union Districts (CUDs). The proposed merger would unite resources, experience, expertise, and a shared commitment to deliver exceptional high-speed internet services to their collective 71 communities. Working together, they will be better able to support digital equity, economic growth, and community development across the Northeast Kingdom and Central Vermont.

Western Governors encourage Congress and federal agencies to recognize that the current definition of broadband – 25/3 Mbps – does not correspond with the requisite download and upload speeds necessary to support many business, education, and health care applications that promote economic and community prosperity.

North Texas Innovation Alliance is a 501(c)3 regional consortium of over 40 municipalities, agencies, corporations and academic institutions across North Texas working to create the most connected, smart and resilient region in the country. The alliance is re-launching the "Internet for North Texas Coalition” (I4NTX).

San Francisco (CA) has offered jail tablets and their content at no cost to incarcerated people, part of a wave of institutions starting to decouple carceral communications from a profit motive. The free tablet program was introduced in May of 2023, a logical follow-up to San Francisco making jail phone calls free in 2020, the first county in the country to do so and the second city after New York. Before 2023, the San Francisco jails had never implemented any tablet program for all inmates.