Colorado Springs, Colorado and its city-owned utility have begun construction on the second phase of a promising open access fiber optic network that should bring affordable fiber broadband to the city of half a million residents.

Construction of the network by Springs Utilities began in the first region in September 2022, shortly after the city-owned utility struck a 25-year lease agreement with Ting to be the network anchor tenant. Once completed, the network aims to deliver multi-gigabit service to roughly 200,000 homes, businesses, and city anchor institutions.

Local residents can pre-order service via the Ting website, but the company has yet to announce pricing or service tiers for its Colorado Springs deployment.

Brian Wortinger, Manager of fiber optics and telecommunications for Springs Utilities, told ILSR that the first phase of deployment passed 21,000 homes in the first fiber hut reason.

“Take rate is not a consideration for us, as we will lease 100 percent of the addresses to our anchor tenant, Ting Internet,” Wortinger said when asked about subscriber interest. “Their degree of success in obtaining customers has no impact on the revenues that we will generate through our dark fiber lease with them or any other tenant.”

The first phase of the network construction began in September of 2022, resulting in 225 new fiber route miles between I-25 and North Powers Boulevard. The second phase of the deployment began in June, and is focusing on the Rockrimmon neighborhood in Northwest Colorado Springs across I-25.

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Overall, project managers say they are only slightly behind their original projected schedule.

It was a big week for ECFiber as Vermont’s first – and oldest – Communication Union District (CUD) celebrated lighting up the last hub of its 1,500 mile-network in White River Junction.

To mark the occasion of connecting the “golden patch cord” that will extend high-speed Internet service to eight more communities in the Upper Valley region, White River Junction’s VFW Hall was packed this past Tuesday with CUD officials, local and state leaders, enthusiastic residents, and U.S. Sen. Peter Welch. They were there to celebrate what ECFiber officials liken to “the Golden Spike moment tying the first transcontinental railroad together.”

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After a 30-piece band played marching tunes, ECFiber Chairman F.X. Flinn marched to the podium to describe the meaning of the moment.

"It’s come to fruition today with a lighting of the White River Junction hub," he said. "This is the last piece of the puzzle for the network we originally envisioned that would bring world-class broadband to every home and business in the 23 member towns that originally voted town meeting day 2008 to create ECFiber."

Sen. Welch, an ECFiber subscriber who also spoke at the event, credited the state’s community broadband approach as the linchpin to solving the state’s digital divide:

“If we in rural Vermont were going to depend on the big telecommunication companies to wire our homes and get us Internet, we’d be waiting until our grandchildren had grandchildren. It wasn’t going to happen.”

Eight More Towns Join CUD 

Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative (SVEC) has begun construction on an ambitious new fiber deployment that will soon bring affordable, multi-gigabit fiber access to all of the cooperative’s existing electrical customers in rural Northern Florida.

Cooperative officials tell ILSR its three-phase build out is well underway, with a beta anticipated this summer and the first commercial customers connected by August. SVEC Communications Director Jon Little says the cooperative’s goal remains to deliver affordable fiber to all 20,000 of the cooperative's current electric customers by the end of 2026.

“We’ve broken our territory into three phases based partly on population or possible customers,” Little said.

The cooperative’s recently created subsidiary, Rapid Fiber Internet, will interface directly with subscribers, while Conexon manages deployment of more than 4,100 miles of fiber. Electrical users won’t see price hikes; the projected $93 million deployment cost will be funded by a combination of grants and loans paid back exclusively through user subscriptions.

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Little told ISLR that make ready (preparing utility poles for fiber attachments) prep and engineering for phase one are complete, and make ready construction for phase one is roughly 40 percent complete. He added that primary fiber construction for phase one is roughly twenty percent complete.

“We’re hoping that we will have a group of beta customers starting next month,” Little said. “We want to go about a month to get their feedback, and so we’re still hoping sometime in August to offer hookups to our members on that first feeder.”

Knoxville Utilities Board remains on track to construct one of the biggest municipal broadband deployments ever attempted, and hopes to have delivered affordable fiber access to 55,000 Knoxville households and businesses before the end of the year.

In 2021, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the state Comptroller’s office signed off on the utility’s long percolating plan to build a $702 million million fiber network.

Once completed, the network will provide affordable fiber access to 214,000 households across KUB’s 688-square-mile service area spanning Knox, Grainger, Union, and Sevier counties.

20,000 KUB customers in Inskip, Morningside, Park City and other parts of East Tennessee have already received access to the network, which provides residential customers with symmetrical gigabit fiber for $65 a month, symmetrical 2.5 gigabit service for $150 a month, and symmetrical 10 Gbps for $300 a month.

Business customers currently receive the option of a symmetrical 500 megabits tier for $85 a month, a symmetrical gigabit tier for $150 a month, or a Custom Connect Pro plan tailored to specific business bandwidth and reliability needs.

Despite Covid-related supply chain challenges, officials say the project remains on time and within budget. An estimated 35,500 more households should receive access over the next few months, with 55,000 total customers connected before the end of the year. The utility is promising to track project progress via an online deployment map.

Sometimes local coalitions can beat Goliath.

In July of 2022, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and several state lawmakers visited Lake Providence in East Carroll Parish to announce the community had secured a $4 million grant to build a fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network in one of the most poorly connected parts of the state.

But, as we first reported here, the monopoly cable provider Sparklight (formerly known as Cable One) filed a challenge to the grant claiming the cable company already serves 2,856 homes there. Following Sparklight’s multi-state campaign to prevent competition in areas where the company operates, the challenge brought the project to a grinding halt, sparking Delta Interfaith to leap into action. With the help of allied organizations, the coalition was able to secure a major victory for community broadband in rural Louisiana.

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The Power of Community-based Coalitions

ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks (CBN) Initiative continues to host Let’s Get Going Broadband Bootcamps across the country.

The next two upcoming bootcamps are being sponsored by the New Mexico Office of Broadband Access and Expansion and will be held at Doña Ana Community College in Anthony, New Mexico on June 28 from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Another will be held the following day, June 29, at the Tribal Administration Building on the Pueblo of Tesuque in New Mexico.

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The bootcamp agenda includes:

• What is broadband and how is it deployed?
• The basics of wireless and fiber optics
• What funding is available to improve broadband in local communities?
• Coalition-building to improve local broadband networks

The in-person, hands-on bootcamps are aimed at helping participants understand broadband and digital equity basics, identify local needs, evaluate options, and chart a path forward. From leveraging existing assets, to financing, to partnerships, to evaluating models for success, this program is designed to demystify every step of the process.

If you are in New Mexico or nearby, there is still time to register here.

Attendance is free, but submission and acceptance of an application is required prior to the event. Space is limited and priority will be given to local community members and small local teams eager to learn together and mobilize locally to improve connectivity.

Inspired by Ammon, Idaho’s heralded open-access fiber network, the city of Eagle, located in the southwestern part of the state and home to 32,000 residents, is now soaring ahead with building its own open-access fiber network to connect city facilities and bring quality broadband to residents and businesses.

Eagle’s low density makes it expensive to connect, and as a result, the city has suffered from a lack of investment from private broadband providers. This has left residents – many of whom work from home or homeschool their children – with limited and antiquated options. But Eagle Mayor Jason Pierce wasn’t ready to hand over the city’s connectivity future to the big incumbents.

He explained to ILSR how Ammon’s “successful model” was the inspiration for Eagle and other cities across the Gem State to embark on a mission to provide city-wide connectivity and competition in areas underserved by the big incumbents.

“Cities were using [American Rescue Plan Act] ARPA dollars to help supplement […] private companies. We didn’t think that was the proper way to [go]. Federal dollars are the people’s money, they should own whatever we use it for. We need to be going after [public funding] to get [our residents’] tax dollars back into our communities.”

The open access network will give small local providers a chance to go into areas that it would not have previously made financial sense for them to serve. With the infrastructure already in place though, these companies will be able to enter the market and offer competition.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has awarded a $17.5 million grant to NEK Community Broadband (NEK Broadband), providing another shot in the arm for Vermont’s fast-growing collection of Communications Union Districts (CUDs). Such CUDs continue to play a starring role in Vermont’s efforts to finally conquer the digital divide.

NEK Broadband’s latest grant comes from the USDA’s ReConnect Loan & Grant Program, which helps defray the costs of network hardware and broadband deployment to rural and traditionally underserved U.S. markets.

The program this week doled out an additional $714 million in grants and loans to projects across 19 states.

NEK Broadband officials say its $17.5 million award will be combined with a $5.8 million investment to deliver affordable fiber access to 3,295 homes, 94 businesses, 183 farms and 11 educational facilities across 22 towns in Orleans, Caledonia, and Essex counties in Vermont.

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“For too long, large pockets of our state have been denied this critical resource because companies haven’t found it profitable enough to invest,” Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said in an announcement of NEK’s latest grant. “This federal funding is transformative, because the money is going directly to the very communities who will benefit, instead of having to go through those who care more about profits than delivering service.”

After receiving $50 million in new federal funding, the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative (NHEC) has begun a major expansion of its fiber network across large swaths of the state, providing many long-frustrated rural residents access to ultra-fast, affordable broadband for the first time ever.

NHEC currently provides electricity to 88,000 largely rural homes and businesses across 118 New Hampshire communities. In October of last year, NHEC received a $50 million grant from the New Hampshire Business and Economic Affairs Department, made possible by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

“NHEC is a member-owned, nonprofit electric cooperative and our business is providing essential services to rural New Hampshire,” NHEC President/CEO Alyssa Clemsen Roberts said after the grant infusion. “We welcome the opportunity to provide much-needed high-speed internet to the same areas that NHEC first electrified more than 80 years ago. Grant funding is helpful to our plans to reach all underserved members, and we are grateful for the trust placed in us by the BEA to get the job done.”

That money is being used to shore up NHEC’s growing expansion into broadband access via NHEC's wholly owned subsidiary, NH Broadband. NH Broadband began planning its expansion into broadband in 2019, buoyed by another $6.7 million grant made possible by the CARES Act and the Connecting New Hampshire Emergency Broadband Program.

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NHEC spokesman Seth Wheeler told ILSR that the initial CARES Act grant helped the company deliver affordable fiber access to 1,500 NHEC subscribers in six towns. The new $50 million grant will supercharge a cooperative effort by NH Broadband to expand that broadband access to 15,000 current NHEC electricity customers.

Longmont, Colorado’s NextLight community fiber network isn’t just delivering fast and affordable fiber access to locals, it’s consistently winning awards nationwide.

The city-owned network has topped PC Magazine’s Readers’ Choice rankings, which asked readers to rate their satisfaction with their residential broadband providers. Nextlight was also rated as the top gaming ISP of 2023, and was rated the fastest ISP in the nation in 2018 and the second fastest ISP by the magazine last year.

The city was also rated the 17th best work-at-home city in another 2022 survey. This latest survey asked magazine readers to assess ISP satisfaction based on speed, reliability and value. NextLight excelled at all three.

“NextLight's near-perfect scores, including an astronomic 9.9 for overall satisfaction, are unprecedented in the history of PCMag's surveys of ISPs,” the magazine noted. “The company's lowest score is for setup, and yet that number is still higher than almost any other rating earned by another ISP in any category.”