Video On Community Networks: One of Our Favs

Officials in Bountiful, Utah say they’ve completed the city’s $48 million open access fiber network a year ahead of schedule, bringing fast, affordable broadband access to the Salt Lake City suburb of 45,000. The city of Bountiful owns the network while UTOPIA designed, built and manages the network and takes a share of the revenue.

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors recently announced that it has approved a list of new affordable housing sites that are eligible to receive free Internet for one year. According to the county, 556 low-income Sonoma County households across 10 different housing locations should qualify for the free broadband service.

The remote West Texas city of Monahans has spent the last decade taking matters into their own hands and now the city’s 7,500 residents are headed for the right side of the digital divide. The city’s network build is in partnership with Hosted America, which is acting as the first last mile ISP serving residents.

The City of Baltimore is making steady progress with several grant-fueled initiatives to deliver fiber and wireless to city apartment complexes to further expand affordable access. The city is putting the finishing touches on a Request for Proposal (RFP) to strike a new public-private-partnership with an as-yet-unselected broadband provider.

Vermont’s Otter Creek Communications Utility District (CUD) says it has completed its ambitious fiber deployment, bringing affordable access to more than 6,000 homes and businesses in the Rutland County region of the Green Mountain State. Otter Creek CUD leveraged grant funding to form a public-private partnership with Consolidated Communications.

Superior, Wisconsin officials say they’re getting very close to lighting up the first subscribers of a city-owned fiber network that will finally bring affordable, next-generation fiber access to the city’s long under-served community of 26,000. The city maintains that its ultimate goal is to connect every last city resident. Phase 1 of the network deployment is expected to cost $6.25 million, buoyed heavily by grants made possible by the 2021 federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).