Editor's Note: Making Community Broadband Work for You

The Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program provides more than $42 billion to expand high-speed internet access. It will go a long way toward bringing broadband to underserved areas, but some communities could still get left behind.

Deploying broadband is not just about delivering speedier consumer internet in rural areas with limited options; it should also address markets that don’t meet federal funding criteria. Unfortunately, these are the communities where incumbents haven’t invested in high-speed services.

“Communities are saying, ‘We’re not rural, but we have areas where people are complaining,’” says Keith Quales, Jr., president of A2D, a competitive local exchange carrier. “These are the forgotten markets where the incumbents have made some upgrades to keep people calm.”

Unique Use Cases

In this issue, we track how three communities are promoting digital equity and addressing future uses:

• Clayton County, Georgia: A2D created eCommunity Holdings, an open-access platform to serve overlooked communities.
• Sterling Ranch, Colorado: A master-planned community makes fiber-based broadband a key attraction by equipping every home with Quantum Fiber’s 8 Gbps service.
• Bay High School in Lincoln, Nebraska: An alternative school is enhancing digital inclusion by using ALLO Communications gigabit fiber services.

Fiber Enables Optionality

When a community plants a broadband seed that includes dark fiber infrastructure, it creates a future-proofed structure that can be used for multiple consumer, business and wholesale carrier applications.

Dark fiber is fiber infrastructure that is not yet “lit” or put into use by a service provider. A community could sell fiber capacity to wireless operators backhauling 5G traffic.

Sterling Ranch is laying dark fiber. “Building out dark fiber gives us much optionality for the future,” says Walker Hinshaw, COO of Lumiere Fiber.

Communities investing in broadband infrastructure can make a new mark for themselves. See how communities have crafted broadband plans to serve multiple applications during the Broadband Communities Summit in May.

Sean Buckley

Sean Buckley is the editor-in-chief of Broadband Communities. You can contact him at sean@bbcmag.com.