Public Advocate Jumaane Williams on Wednesday rolled out a new report urging New York City to build its own fiber-optic network and let multiple internet providers ride on top of it, so every New Yorker can afford a home connection. Speaking at a Lower East Side event, he cast municipal fiber as a way to crack open monopoly-style pricing and bring cheaper, faster service to neighborhoods that have long paid more for less. His office is pitching the idea as a long-term public-works investment in an essential utility, not a quick subsidy that vanishes with the next budget fight.
The plan, detailed in a May 27 report from the public advocate, recommends that the city lean on existing conduits and other public assets to build a neutral, city-owned backbone that smaller and community providers could lease, according to the Office of the Public Advocate. The report spells out phased construction, governance changes, and procurement tweaks aimed at helping low-cost options scale up. Williams' team also calls for tighter oversight of the city's conduit system so independent internet providers can tap into the underground network more quickly.
What Williams Is Proposing
At the center of the proposal is an open-access municipal fiber model: the city would build and own backbone fiber, then allow multiple retail internet providers to compete over that shared infrastructure. The approach tracks with the city's 2020 Internet Master Plan, which estimated that building an almost citywide open-access network would cost roughly $2.1 billion and roll out in stages. Williams' report argues that a staged, mixed model that pairs municipal assets with community providers could accelerate service to neighborhoods that have been left behind.
Neighborhoods Still Cut Off
The public advocate's report flags stark geographic gaps in service. In some census areas, as many as one third of households either skip home broadband entirely or rely only on mobile internet, leaving students and jobseekers at a clear disadvantage. The report highlights community-led efforts and small pilots that have delivered very low monthly rates at the building level, and amNewYork has noted a Lower East Side building that gets service through a community network for about $10 a month as an example of what those alternatives can pull off. Williams' team says those experiments show that deeply affordable connections are possible when the physical infrastructure and organizational support line up.
Politics, Precedent And The Road Ahead
The report also reminds readers that the city's broadband history has been bumpy. A June 2015 audit by the city's tech agency documented gaps in Verizon's FiOS buildout and long delays in filling installation requests, and the city later sued over those issues. The litigation was settled in 2020, with Verizon agreeing to expand FiOS availability to roughly 500,000 additional households, according to reporting and public records. The Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications audit and subsequent coverage lay out the core findings and the settlement timeline, and Williams' report calls for clearer conduit leasing rules and stronger enforcement so similar problems do not resurface.
At the same time, the city has leaned on programs like Big Apple Connect and Neighborhood Internet to provide subsidized or free connections to public housing residents and other vulnerable New Yorkers. The Office of Technology & Innovation has told the City Council that these efforts now reach hundreds of thousands of people, as the administration tries to balance short-term relief with longer-range infrastructure plans.
What Comes Next
Williams is pressing the City Council and the Office of Technology & Innovation to fold his recommendations into upcoming broadband planning and franchise-oversight work, so that city-owned assets are used more aggressively to boost competition. His report and local coverage both note that any full citywide buildout would be a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar project that could stretch into the next decade, meaning a municipal network would be a long-haul endeavor but potentially a transformative one for New Yorkers, according to amNewYork.
