ARPA is funding cheap community-owned gigabit fiber to neglected neighborhoods

ARPA Is Quietly Funding Cheap ($50-$65 A Month) Community-Owned Gigabit Fiber Access To Long Neglected Neighborhoods from the build-it-and-they-will-come dept The 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) continues to quietly help fund a number of extremely popular community-owned, open access fiber deployments that are challenging entrenched U.S. monopoly power, and driving super cheap, community-owned and operated fiber networks into long neglected towns. New York State, for example, just leveraged ARPA funds to give a $26 million grant to Oswego County. Oswego County is going to use that money to build an open access fiber network. That means multiple ISPs can come in and compete over shared infrastructure owned by the county. Our Copia report showcased how this model can help disrupt monopoly power and lower broadband costs for users. The anchor tenant on Oswego County’s new network, Empire Access, will provide locals with 500 Megabit per second (Mbps) service for $50 a month; symme ... Read full article.