Tomorrow night, the Gainesville City Commission was slated to discuss how the city will spend its $32 million in American Rescue Plan funds and how much of that should go towards extending the city’s fiber network for residential service. The meeting has been postponed due to COVID-19 concerns and will likely be rescheduled in the coming weeks. Still, broadband advocates, led by the citizen-group Connected Gainesville, are pushing for city commissioners to set aside $12 million of the city’s American Rescue Plan money to fund the first phase of construction over the next year.

The Michigan State University-based Comprehensive Economic Recovery Initiative's (CERI) Building Broadband Better project is hosting a webinar this Thursday, August 26th, at 12pm ET.

The New Hampshire Electric Cooperative connected its first 900 households in Lempster, Clarksville, Colebrook and Stewartstown to its core network, funded with a $6.7 million grant from the state’s Connecting New Hampshire Emergency Broadband Program. Last month, having been awarded another $6.5 million from the federal Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, the newly created NHEC subsidiary NH Broadband began expanding the network into the towns of Sandwich and Acworth, which will bring fiber Internet service to 1,500 homes and businesses by early 2022.

Ten years ago the local cable provider in Tuttle, Oklahoma (pop. 7,300) went bankrupt. After looking at community-owned networks around the country, city officials decided that it should invest for the well-being of its local economy and its residents, as well as to give local government the tools it needed to increase efficiency and save money. Its network, Tuttle Fiber, is complete today, and will deliver universal, fast, affordable, and locally accountable Internet access for decades to come.

Springfield prides itself as a “City of Firsts.” Located in central Massachusetts, 90 miles west of Boston, Springfield is where the nation’s first armory was located and where the first U.S.-made automobile was built. It’s also the birthplace of basketball and Theodor Geisel, better known by his pen name “Dr. Seuss.”

Last month, the city took its first step to explore whether it will become the first of New England’s five biggest cities to build a municipal fiber-to-the-home network.

Jamestown - home to 30,000 residents, the largest population center in western Chautauqua County - could become the first city in the state of New York to construct a citywide municipal fiber network using American Rescue Plan relief funds.

In April, Mayor Eddie Sundquist formed a task force to assess the potential for a municipal fiber network in Jamestown. The city is currently working with EntryPoint Networks on a feasibility study to estimate the overall cost of the project, as well as surveying residential interest in building a municipally owned open access broadband network in Jamestown. 

Two utility cooperatives in South Carolina have teamed up to bring fiber-to-the-home Internet service to members living in Anderson, Greenville, Oconee, Pickens and Spartanburg counties. It’s a partnership that has given birth to Upcountry Fiber, a new subsidiary owned by Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative (BREC). The plan is to build out the network incrementally with construction expected to take five years to complete. BREC is not only focused on serving its 25,000 members, when the network is fully built-out, all 64,890 households and businesses in Blue Ridge’s 1,800 square mile service area will have access to gigabit speed fiber connectivity.