Connecticut Nears Statewide Broadband Coverage

When a winter storm rolls through Connecticut, residents check road closures, school cancellations, power outage maps, and emergency alerts online in real time. The same high-speed internet connection that keeps families informed during severe weather also supports remote work, job applications, telehealth appointments, and small businesses every day. Today, reliable broadband is no longer a luxury but core infrastructure that keeps our communities running.

That is why Connecticut is no longer talking about broadband in general terms. The state now has a federally approved, fully funded plan to reach remaining eligible unserved and underserved locations, and the numbers show just how close we are to the finish line.

Connecticut’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) has identified 717 unserved and underserved homes and small businesses in its federally approved BEAD Final Proposal that remain eligible for broadband expansion under the program.

The plan to fix that is concrete:

• 82% of these locations will be served with fiber-optic infrastructure, the gold standard for speed and reliability.
• The remaining locations will receive scalable, high-speed solutions that exceed federal performance standards.
• In addition, 1,065 community anchor institutions (including schools, libraries, public safety facilities, and other critical community sites) are eligible for enhanced connectivity under the BEAD framework.

Connecticut’s BEAD proposal establishes forward-looking performance standards that exceed federal minimums and prioritize long-term network capacity. The top speeds to be offered range from 2 gigabits per second symmetrical service to 7 gigabits symmetrical, meaning upload speeds are just as fast as download speeds for activities like running a home business, transferring large files, or supporting high-quality telehealth visits. Lower-cost plans with slower speeds will also be available, but the networks themselves are being built with multi-gig capacity designed to meet growing data demands for decades to come.

$34 Million Already Advancing Broadband Projects Statewide

While BEAD projects prepare to begin construction, DEEP’s ConneCTed Communities Grant Program projects are already hard at work building out to an additional 5,582 unserved and underserved locations across 116 cities and towns.

By pairing federal funding streams and deploying dollars strategically, Connecticut has been able to move projects forward immediately, reducing the number of locations that will ultimately require BEAD support.

From “Broadband Expansion” to Universal Coverage

For years, broadband expansion meant gradual progress. Today, Connecticut has a defined inventory of remaining eligible locations, a federally approved plan to reach them, and active projects underway through state grants.

Broadband is no longer just a policy discussion - it's a construction project:

• Hundreds of homes and small businesses gaining high-speed access
• More than a thousand community anchor institutions eligible for upgraded connectivity
• Fiber infrastructure reaching the vast majority of remaining gaps
• Millions already deployed to accelerate construction