Updated Broadband Report – The Grift is Growing

On Tuesday, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) released an update of its 2024 report “Government Broadband Consultants – The Big Grift.” Since TPA released its initial study last July, more consultants have been rising to the forefront, working with cities and localities to push for the growth of more taxpayer-funded government-owned networks (GONs). With billions of federal and local taxpayer dollars being used for building high-speed internet infrastructure, broadband consulting is quickly becoming big business and a bigger grift.

With billions of federal taxpayer dollars flowing into states for the purpose of extending high- speed internet infrastructure, broadband consulting is quickly becoming big business and a big grift. Nowhere does this grift manifest more obviously than in the proliferation of taxpayer-funded local government-owned networks (GONs). TPA has written extensively about some of the major national consultants, such as CTC Technology & Energy and Magellan Advisors. Now, more companies are entering the consulting market at the state and regional levels. In many cases, states have partnered with consultants to develop long-range plans for how to spend the windfall they receive through the federal Broadband, Access, Equity and Deployment (BEAD) Program, which is now distributing $42.5 billion in tax dollars across the United States for broadband deployment. Despite often being touted as a silver-bullet solution to close the digital divide for unserved Americans looking for broadband, GONs have
consistently failed to fulfill their promises. It is unfortunate that with the proliferation of money through such initiatives as the BEAD Program more consultants are coming out of the woodwork to push for GONs. New to this year’s version of the report are four new consultants, including Design Nine, ECC Technologies, and Hometown Fiber.

Design Nine

Blacksburg, Virginia-based Design Nine was founded in 1987 by Andrew Cohill and provides a variety of broadband network services, including early phase planning, network architecture and design. It also provides network construction oversight and project management.[xvi] In 2022, Design Nine completed a local survey for residents of Williamston, Massachusetts indicating a GON constructed in the city would need a high take rate of 60 percent to prove successful. Some city leaders pushed back on calls to build the network, including Andy Hogeland, the select board member who initially commissioned the study. "It's a matter of people's risk adversity," Hogeland said at an August 2022 Williamstown Select Board meeting. "The survey responses are great, but when you ask people to pay their money, It's a different game. It's a risky business.[xvii] Former Select Board member Jeffrey Thomas noted at the meeting that the COVID-19 pandemic showed that Williamstown had sufficient internet, indicating
a GON would simply be overbuilding broadband in the community.[xviii] "We all lived through the pandemic," Thomas said. "The community moved to working from home, we were on Zoom, we were streaming Netflix. I did fine, and I have a very internet- intensive job that I did from home without a problem.” In a 2024 community meeting with residents of Northampton, Massachusetts, Cohill advocated for broadband overbuilding and taxpayer waste. “It’s really unfortunate the way, particularly the federal funding, has been exclusively for unserved and in some cases underserved areas,” Cohill said, pushing for municipal broadband in Northampton over bridging the digital divide in other areas currently without high-speed internet. Design Nine was rebuffed in Dodge County, Wisconsin, after failing to deliver a timely GON study. “We approved a study to discover what is actually needed to increase broadband access in the county and four months after we were supposed to receive it we still have nothing,”
said County Supervisor David Guckenberger at a County Board meeting in June 2022. Dodge County denied a $400,000 allocation in federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds for engineering for a broadband system due to questions about the proposed project.

ECC Technologies

New York-based ECC Technologies has provided technology consulting services since 1995, becoming a national leader in open-access fiber networks. It has worked on many GONs, and is New York’s go-to company for broadband consulting. The company was commissioned by the state in 2022 to determine the level of broadband access, finding at that time that 97.4 percent of New York was considered served by two providers offering internet speeds of 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload. Clearly, any remaining access and speed gaps would have reduced further in subsequent years. In stacking the deck in favor of taxpayer-subsidized competition, the report pointed out that 55 percent of address points were served by a single high-speed provider. As a company poised to receive millions of dollars in government contracts (taxpayer dollars) to build broadband infrastructure, ECC stood to benefit greatly from New York’s insistence that each area be served by at least two broadband providers. A quote from
Madison County (New York) Administrator Mark Scimone, who worked with ECC on a government fiber project there, is telling. Referencing the county’s efforts to apply for a federal ReConnect grant with the assistance of ECC, Scimone noted that the grant process favors applications such as local governments with virtually limitless funds. “You need to be pre-approved that you’re solvent . . . well, we’re a county government,” he said. “We raise taxes to fund our operation. We’re not going to go bankrupt.”

Hometown Fiber

Hometown Fiber is now partnering with Willmar, Minnesota, on a controversial GON project. Hometown Fiber has been chosen to manage the proposed network, which will cost about $31 million to construct and be funded by general obligation bonds, backed by tax revenue from Willmar residents. The city of about 21,000 residents has already spent $675,000 in taxpayer money planning and researching the GON, which they intended to provide fiber to all residences and businesses in Willmar. The Council had signed an agreement with local provider Hometown Fiber to operate the network, an open-access model that would allow other providers to lease some of the fiber. As TPA previously pointed out, the open-access model can run into the same problems as middle-mile networks. Those problems include duplicative fiber, as major providers already have their own infrastructure in place, and the wasting of taxpayer money when private companies decline to lease the fiber.
Consultants like those discussed in the report often rig polling and inflate estimates to sell local governments and taxpayers on building GONs, many of which self-deal back to the consultancy. Meanwhile, these projects routinely fail. Local taxpayers and utility ratepayers are left holding the bag when GONs financially implode. Such projects deter sustainable private investment in broadband services by well-established providers. Communities would be wise to keep the names and tactics detailed above top of mind as tens of billions of federal broadband dollars continue to flow into local coffers.


BLOGS:

Monday: TPA Encouraged as Trump Considers Cannabis Rescheduling ([link removed])

Tuesday: Government Broadband Consultants: The Big Grift Grows in 2025 ([link removed])

Thursday: Anti–First Amendment Merger Enforcement at the FCC ([link removed])

Friday: Summer Reading: Trade Policy ([link removed])

MEDIA:

August 7, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) mentioned TPA in their story, “Baltimore County's watchdog wage woes: Walker's proposed salary sparks some questions.”

August 7, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me for their story on the Baltimore County Inspector General.

August 8, 2025: The Rio Grande Guardian (McAllen, Tx.) ran TPA’s op-ed, “Texas Should Lead on Hemp-based THC Regulations.”

August 9, 2025: Real Clear Science ran TPA's oped, "Lunacy: Taxpayer-Funded Nuclear Reactors on the Moon."

August 10, 2025: The Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, Md.) ran TPA’s op-ed, “New tariff policy will empty Americans’ wallets.”

August 11, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) mentioned TPA in their story, “Baltimore City Officials Take Trip to Ocean City”

August 11, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me for their story on the Baltimore City budget constraints.

August 12, 2025: WBAL radio (Baltimore, Md.) mentioned TPA in their news segment on Trump’s tariffs.

August 12, 2025: The Daily Economy ran TPA’s op-ed, “DC's $4.4B RFK Stadium Boondoggle: A Gift to Interest Groups, a Burden on Taxpayers”

August 14, 2025: I appeared on WBOB 600 AM radio (Jacksonville, Fl.) to talk about government spending and regulation.

August 14, 2025: Inside Sources ran TPA’s op-ed, “Banning Online Sales of Nicotine Pouches Is a Disaster for Rural America.”

August 14, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me for their story on property taxes in Baltimore.

August 14, 2025: The Waxahachie Daily Light ran TPA’s op-ed, “Texas should lead on hemp-based THC regulations”

August 15, 2025: Real Clear Health ran TPA's op-ed, "Lawsuits, Misinformation Hold Back Lifesaving Vaccines."

Have a great weekend!

David Williams
President
Taxpayers Protection Alliance
1101 14^th Street, NW
Suite 500
Washington, D.C.
Office: (202) 930-1716
Mobile: (202) 258-6527
www.protectingtaxpayers.org

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