If you're a community considering building or partnering to build publicly owned broadband infrastructure in the near future, we want to hear from you.

Connect Humanity - an organization focused on making sure everyone has fast, affordable, and reliable Internet access - may be able to help speed the financing of community networks, including with some capacity to offer non-traditional borrowing or below-market rates. What is their approach?

Over the past 25 years, traditional telecom operators have only managed to connect half the world — and that was the easy half. Universal access will require alternative infrastructure providers, new types of financing and business models, changes in policy, digital skill-building at scale, and an increase in locally relevant content. To meet the needs of this moment and prepare for the years to come, we will need to invest in a diverse set of actors dedicated to ending the digital divide. There are no silver bullets here.

Connect Humanity, in partnership with the World Economic Forum, is rallying philanthropic organizations, investors, industry, governments, civil society leaders, and international experts to build a community of practice around the shared goal of connecting the unconnected, supported by the capital to do so. With awareness about the plight of the unconnected at an all time high, this is the moment to substantially invest in bringing Internet access to all people.

This initiative is open to creative ideas, but the focus will come back to a key question: What are the long-term results in terms of improving Internet access for historically-marginalized groups?

Don't know if your project fits? Email us and ask!

Maybe you've got a coalition of communities in Maine but don't have experience in the capital markets, or your approach just doesn't quite pencil out for a conventional loan. Maybe you've got a particular project mapped out for a rural or urban area that will make a significant difference in people's lives. Consultants too - raise your hand and pitch us an idea. It doesn't have to be fully formed yet.

Email us at broadband@muninetworks.org.

Header image by Fabian Blank on Unsplash

The winners of the Truist EPIC grant program, which we wrote about earlier this year, have been announced.

47 projects applied for the funds. Innovative, community-centered projects in Florida and Alabama will be taking home money. So too is Wilson, North Carolina for an expansion of its municipal network, Greenlight. The awards will be distributed by the Internet Society:

Five recipients will share $1 million in grant funding to expand broadband access in their communities as part of the Truist Expanding Potential in Communities (EPIC) Grant. The grant program supports broadband initiatives to help alleviate disparities in education, employment and social welfare in the Southeastern United States.

The grants are "directed toward supporting community networks built, owned and operated by local governments and organizations." 

The full list includes:

• The Duval County Public Schools will receive $180,000 for Project OVERCOME21, a plan to turn schools in the Florida district into local broadband hubs for the surrounding community. The hubs boost signals to a three-mile radius and connect to the school district’s existing network.
• The Tuskegee Housing Authority will receive nearly $180,000 for its Jesup “Cyber Wagon” Project in Tuskegee, Ala. The project will provide broadband access to low-income, Black communities where a lack of Internet has hindered access to health, education and other services.
• The City of Wilson, N.C., has been granted nearly $180,000 to expand North Carolina’s Community Broadband fiber-to-the-home into a rural, majority Black community in Wilson County.
• The City of Williston, Fla., will receive $108,000 for its broadband program, COWLink, to support efforts to improve access and speed of broadband for local businesses, schools and homes.
• Wave 7 Communications will receive more than $150,000 to connect residents of Enfield, N.C. and outlying rural areas, train digital stewards and provide online learning to residents.

In a press release, Internet Society Regional Vice President for...

Congress and the White House are currently managing a handful of different infrastructure proposals which are coming down the pipeline fast. In terms of major legislation, there’s President Biden’s revised $65 billion in funding as part of the American Jobs Plan, the Bridge Act, which would see $40 billion dispensed in state block grants aimed at unserved and poverty-stricken parts of the country, and the LIFT Act, which comes from the 32 Democrats on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and would allocate $80 billion for infrastructure and another $30 billion for next-generation 911 services and digital inclusion efforts. 

It remains uncertain where we will ultimately land on the above, but a few things are clear: whatever plan we as a country adopt, this is a once-in-a-generation endeavor to upgrade and expand our broadband infrastructure in the name of future-proof, affordable, and universal service. Whatever framework is agreed upon will drive how and where we invest, and those are critical considerations to make.

It’s time for you to reach out to your city, state, and congressional leaders and stress that all of the above can only be achieved when communities are allowed to play an active role in the process. Local challenges require local solutions, especially when it comes to broadband infrastructure. The current marketplace is fundamentally broken, with more than 80 million Americans stuck with just one Internet Service Provider for their home connections: the majority of whom are national monopolies that have spent far more time and money during the last twenty year to protecting their territories so they can continue to extract profits from communities and send them to shareholders thousands of miles away.

Above all else, this means that cities and cooperatives – as trusted, accountable entities which have been delivering basic...

This article was originally published on GovTech.com. Read the original here. This version contains additional details.

The southwest corner of New Hampshire will be blanketed with Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) networks over the next two years, as over 20 communities are drawing up plans to enter into public-private partnerships to boost high-speed Internet access in the Granite State.

Fitzwilliam, Marlborough, Gilsum, and Troy voted in March to issue bonds through the New Hampshire Municipal Bond Bank to construct fiber networks; while Greenfield, Jaffrey, Marlow, Roxbury, Keene, Peterborough, and Temple, delayed by the pandemic, have been voting in support of FTTH agreements throughout April, May and June.

According to New Hampshire’s Southwest Region Planning Commission (SWRPC), six more cities, Charlestown, Goshen, Langdon, Salisbury, Sullivan, and Unity, have also issued warrant articles indicating their interest in partnering with a private Internet Service Provider (ISP) to expand Internet access. Most of the cities are considering partnerships with Consolidated Communications to improve insufficient connectivity.

Consolidated is expanding its fiber mileage across southwestern New Hampshire at an increased pace. The ISP has nearly completed construction of FTTH networks in Dublin, Harrisville, Rindge, Westmoreland, and Walpole, five Cheshire County towns which voted to bond last year. Upon finishing construction of the most recent project service agreements, which are expected to be complete by the end of 2021, Consolidated will have upgraded an additional...