Community Broadband Fills Needed Gap in Wisconsin

Hardy Telecommunications, a small community-owned cooperative, connected its first fiber customer in 2013. Slowly and consistently, the cooperative has been expanding its fiber network and is now serving over 5,000 subscribers.

In January, we released our new census of municipal networks in the United States for 2024, and the significant growth that we've seen over the last two years as more and more cities commit to building Internet infrastructure to add new tools for their local government, incentivize new economic development, and improve connectivity for households. The trend has not gone unnoticed by the monopoly players and their allies, and a new short documentary by Light Reading does a great job of outlining the stakes for local governments, residents stuck on poor connections, and the incumbents as the wave of municipal networks grows.

Superior, Wisconsin officials have given the green light to the first pilot area for Superior’s new city-owned fiber network. Dubbed Connect Superior, the open access fiber network aims to deliver affordable gigabit access to every resident, community anchor institution and business in the city of nearly 27,000. The initial $2.26 million cost of the pilot will be paid for with the help of $5 million from the city’s $17 million allocation from the American Rescue Plan Act funding.

In Wisconsin, Republican state lawmakers voted earlier this month to kill Gov. Tony Evers’ plan to invest $750 million of Wisconsin tax dollars to expand high-speed Internet infrastructure across the Badger State. Republicans state lawmakers say the state should wait for Wisconsin’s forthcoming share of the $42.5 billion in federal BEAD funds instead. Meanwhile, Democratic state lawmakers say waiting for BEAD funds would unnecessarily delay the building of vital infrastructure and hurt the state’s economic prospects.

Thanks to a coalition of local digital equity advocates inroads are being made on fixing long-broken California cable franchise law as Digital Equity LA celebrates a major victory in pressuring the California Public Utilities Commission to produce more accurate maps that will be used to determine where the state's broadband funds should be targeted. These efforts come as California is putting its $7 billion broadband expansion plan into place with an eye on boosting competition and driving down consumer costs.