This year the little town Chesterfield partnered with Consolidated Communications to bring fiber-to-the-home to the towns. The Keene Sentinel reports that a number of other towns in the region would like to do the same thing (story is here):

Officials from several area towns say Chesterfield’s success has sparked new discussions around how to solve the problem of inadequate Internet access in rural New Hampshire.

Maybe they shouldn’t get their hopes up, however. As I have previously noted, a June NH Business Review story (here) pointed out that Chesterfield’s situation is unusual and may be hard to replicate.

At least one town, Rindge, is going ahead with bonding for broadband – Monadnock Ledger story here.

Then there’s the town of Sandwich, which hopes (cleverly? foolishly?) to get somebody to build fiber-to-the-home without the town paying anything at all. That story is here.

As a side note, the Sentinel story includes a quote from “Peter ‘Sturdy’ Thomas, a member of the Dublin Broadband Committee”. That nickname tickled me – I’m told by a former Dublin reporter now working at the Monitor that his first reference always includes the nickname “Sturdy” because otherwise nobody in town would know who you were talking about.