Once again, Consumer Reports finds that the top Internet service providers are independently-owned, locally-owned, or publicly-owned ISPs. Among the top 10 rated ISPs were Firefly Fiber Broadband, a subsidiary of the Central Virginia Electric Cooperative offering fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service to roughly 48,000 rural households in its region.

Willmar, Minnesota officials say they’re making steady progress on construction of the city’s planned $24.5 million open access fiber network, with the first residential and business customers slated to come online sometime later this year. Dubbed Willmar Connect, construction of the city-owned fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network broke ground in May 2026, marking a pivotal turn from years of feasibility studies and council debates to actual directional boring, conduit placement, and fiber splicing.

Join us today, Thursday, October 8, from 3:00 to 4:00 PM ET, for this latest installment of the Building for Digital Equity webinar series — a Digital Inclusion Week 2026 special edition. This is a webinar for anyone doing digital equity work on the ground, anyone funding it, and anyone trying to figure out what comes next as the policy landscape keeps shifting.

Empower Broadband, a spinoff of Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative (MEC), says it recently passed the 10,000 subscriber milestone and is making major inroads on bringing affordable fiber Internet access to unserved regions of Mecklenburg, Halifax, Charlotte, and Brunswick counties in Southern Virginia. The $154 million network deployment was financed in part through the Virginia Telecommunication Initiative (VATI), which provided a $69.4 million grant in late 2021 to the Southside Planning District Commission and Empower.

At long last, fiber-to-the-home connectivity is coming to Cape Cod. Gateway Fiber, a Missouri-based Internet service provider already operating in western and central Massachusetts, has announced it has begun network construction in Falmouth and says service will be available to residents and businesses later this year. It’s a development that, after decades of frustration with high prices for cable service, will bring residential fiber connectivity to the region for the first time, initiated seven years ago by an effort to build a community-owned solution.

The Washington State Broadband Office says it has signed contracts with seven broadband providers, tribes, and municipalities to begin work on a major affordable Internet expansion plan that should deliver $165 million in investment across nearly a dozen rural Washington counties and Tribal territories. Most of the impacted areas are rural communities long-neglected by regional dominant telecom monopolies.

ILSR's Christopher Mitchell joins Broadband Breakfast Live Online for a discussion on how Tribal communities are combining fiber, shared networks and adoption support to create Internet services they can govern and sustain. The conversation ranged from fiber and satellites to open-access networks, spectrum rights, data sovereignty and the cost of helping residents get online.

A recent study suggesting New York State officials are trying to hide that the state’s ambitious grant programs are facing significantly higher costs and lower reach doesn’t appear to be based in reality, and originates from a group that fails to disclose its funding. A recent analysis of New York State’s broadband grant programs by the Advanced Communications Law and Policy Institute (ACLP) at New York Law School claims that New York State’s ConnectALL Municipal Infrastructure Program (MIP) is facing $38 million in higher costs, resulting in 34,000 fewer connections than originally promised. The study also claims, incorrectly, that New York State is attempting to hide this data from the public.

Los Alamos County, New Mexico is inching closer to the launch of its “Atomic Fiber” county-wide open access fiber network, which aims to dramatically improve affordable Internet access to the county’s 19,400 heavily-rural residents. The $35 million network price tag is being financed via $40 million in New Mexico Gross Receipts Tax (GRT) revenue bonds. County leaders have stated that the 20-year maintenance and operations cost of the network will be around $15.9 million and paid off via subscription revenues.

A crushing near-miss at the ballot box last year hasn’t stopped the town of Southwick, Massachusetts from chipping away at Comcast’s local monopoly. After falling just 14 votes shy of the two-thirds majority required to authorize a full $16 million municipal fiber build at Town Meeting (353-204) last year, local officials refused to shelve the project. Instead, the Select Board approved a municipal agreement with Westfield Gas & Electric’s Whip City Fiber to construct a targeted pilot network funded entirely by existing money.

As Digital Inclusion Week 2026 kicks off October 4-10, the Building for Digital Equity webinar series — co-hosted by the Institute for Local Self Reliance’s (ILSR) Community Broadband Networks Initiative and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) — returns on October 8th. The livestream will feature a special spotlight on building wireless connectivity for tiny-home communities in Seattle that will uniquely engage the audience in a case-study exploring how local expertise is harnessed, coordinating a cadre of local volunteers, and facing down the challenges of sustainability.

The New Hampshire Electric Cooperative (NHEC) has been awarded a $5.58 million federal broadband grant to help expand affordable fiber access to the rural and underserved parts of its service territory in The Granite State. According to a cooperative announcement, NHEC officials say the New Hampshire Office of Broadband Initiatives has awarded it a $5.58 million grant courtesy of the Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, made possible by the 2021 infrastructure bill.