The Buildout: Pennsylvania awards $204M to Verizon, Comcast and others

The state of Pennsylvania awarded $204 million for 53 broadband projects in 42 counties to connect 40,000 locations. Funding was awarded from the state's share of capital project funds from the American Rescue Plan. The grants will be matched with $200 million from the providers. The big winners were Verizon, which picked up over $78.3 million (via subsidiaries Verizon North and Verizon Pennsylvania), and Comcast, which was awarded $61.7 million. Other providers awarded this round include Windstream ($11.9 million) and Frontier ($3.5 million), plus local and regional providers including Zito ($26.3 million) and Armstrong Telecommunications ($12.4 million). Projects must be completed by the end of 2026 and deliver symmetrical speeds of at least 100 Mbit/s upon completion, according to a press release. Pennsylvania is also set to receive $1.16 billion through the federal government's Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.

Metronet this week announced that a majority of homes and businesses in the city of St. Joseph, Missouri, can now access the company's fiber network, adding the region to Metronet's list of "certified gigabit cities." Metronet started construction on its $25 million St. Joseph network build in November 2022, with initial services coming online in February 2023. According to a press release, the company marked the network milestone with a $10,000 donation to the Second Harvest Community Food Bank. There are roughly 28,000 households in St. Joseph, which has a population of 70,000, according to US Census data. Metronet is backed by Oak Hill Capital with additional funding from KKR.

Shentel's Glo Fiber said that engineering work is underway to expand its fiber network to 40,000 additional homes and businesses in Ohio, in the communities of Zanesville, Hillsboro, Jackson, Johnstown and Greenfield. The company's symmetrical fiber network currently passes 250,000 locations in five states (Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland), according to a press release. Glo Fiber expanded in other ways this week as well, with Shentel announcing that it was rebranding Horizon Telcom, which it recently acquired, as Glo Fiber.

GoNetspeed, another fiber provider funded by Oak Hill Capital, has expanded its network to 3,000 locations in North Lockport, New York. With North Lockport now included in the company's $8 million investment, GoNetspeed's fiber network will reach 8,000 homes and businesses in New York's Lockport region overall.

Brightspeed this week said it is expanding its reach in Dare County, North Carolina. The company, which first launched its fiber network last year in the Dare County region of Manteo, currently reaches 5,000 homes and businesses there and 1,600 in Kitty Hawk. According to Brightspeed, this latest phase of construction will expand its reach to 15,000 homes and businesses across Outer Banks communities including Nags Head, Colington Island and Kitty Hawk. The expansion news follows last week's announcement that Brightspeed now passes 1 million customer locations with its fiber network and is embarking on new fiber construction in Beaufort County, South Carolina. Brightspeed is backed by funding via Apollo Global Management, following its $7.5 billion acquisition of Lumen assets. Mubadala Investment Company has also invested $500 million in Brightspeed, taking a minority stake.

Charter's Spectrum launched services for 400 homes and businesses in Charleston County, South Carolina. The new fiber network is part of the company's commitment through the FCC's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), which gave Spectrum $1.2 billion toward an effort to connect 1.3 million locations in 24 states. It follows related RDOF news last week that Spectrum launched service for 445 homes and small businesses in Allendale County, South Carolina. Also this week, Spectrum launched service for 2,000 homes and businesses in Wildwood, Missouri. The company was awarded funding from the American Rescue Plan for the project and started construction in the region in 2022.

Windstream's Kinetic wrapped up construction on its fiber build in Mount Pleasant, North Carolina. The company held a ribbon cutting ceremony on Friday to commemorate the network launch, reaching 1,257 households (44% of the town, according to a press release). The build in Mount Pleasant is part of Kinetic's broader multi-year, $2 billion investment to expand its fiber service across its 18-state footprint.