Municipal Networks

In a hearing before City Council in June 2022, Baltimore’s then-chief broadband official Jason Hardebeck outlined a vision to bring next-generation internet connection to one of the poorest parts of town, the public housing project Gilmor Homes, within a matter of weeks. He pitched the idea as step one in an aggressive campaign to establish 100 communal Wi-Fi hotspots across West Baltimore, all within a year. But within two months of outlining his proposal for Gilmor Homes to the City Council, Hardebeck was fired from his post without reason given, he says.

The City of Cambridge's (MA) comprehensive year-long municipal broadband feasibility study. The report examines the feasibility of the City of Cambridge implementing a municipal fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) service, providing a detailed FTTP design and cost estimate, and a range of business and financial models for building, operating and providing service to all premises in Cambridge.

Community decision-making is the foundation of Maine’s DNA. Town meetings, volunteer school boards, and local planning efforts are all central to what makes this Maine. Dozens of communities have started this process with local people identifying locations and groups needing better service to develop plans addressing these gaps. But these community-led efforts are under threat from big monopoly internet service providers, who fear competition will lose customers.

West Des Moines (IA) is making steady progress on a $60 million open-access fiber-optic conduit system to expedite the delivery of affordable fiber citywide. And they’re doing it with the help of Google Fiber. West Des Moines is a suburb of Des Moines with a population of 67,000. Like so many US communities, locals have long complained of high broadband prices, spotty coverage, and terrible customer service by the area’s entrenched local monopolies.

The City of Eagle (ID) is putting most of its federal COVID relief dollars to work building a city-wide broadband network. In the past two years, Eagle has spent $4.7 million of its American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds toward planning and developing a network of broadband fiber in the Boise suburb.

In January 2020, former-Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-NY) announced New York City’s Internet Master Plan, setting a path to deliver broadband for low-income New Yorkers by investing in public fiber infrastructure.

Nearly 1,000 miles of fiber-optic conduit is being laid in West Des Moines (IA), bringing lightning-fast internet to every home and business, thanks to a $60 million municipal bond and a novel public-private partnership. Laying fiber lines is costly, messy work: Companies offering fiber service must drill and install conduit on every street in the service area before beginning to offer service and recoup costs. In 2020, West Des Moines entered a partnership with Google Fiber.

In 2020, West Des Moines (IA) entered a partnership with Google Fiber, the super-fast internet service that Alphabet offers in several US cities. But unlike previous cities that have participated in the decade-old initiative, West Des Moines is building the fiber conduit network itself, in exchange for Google Fiber promising to lay its fiber lines in front of every home and business in the city — not just in areas the company believes will be profitable.

Vermont, one of the least populated states in the US, has to contend with plenty of broadband-related challenges. But state legislation and municipal providers have made bridging the digital divide a little easier. Robert Fish, the Deputy Director of the Vermont Community Broadband Board (VCBB), said Vermont’s issues are the same as those elsewhere in the country.

Arlington County, Virginia, is surveying residents and businesses to understand how they use broadband internet service and if their access can be improved. The survey is part of a $250,000 study that could inform ways to bridge the digital divide between residents with good internet connectivity and those without it, using the county’s existing fiber-optic network, dubbed ConnectArlington.