Rhode Island picks Verizon, GoNetspeed for fast internet in 3 towns

The award is the first of two that aim to spend $25 million on improving broadband services in the Ocean State.
Verizon was awarded contracts in Jamestown and Westerly worth more than $3.6 million, according to Rhode Island Commerce . GoNetspeed secured the other contract in Newport valued at $9.3 million. The two companies were able to demonstrate that they can deliver fast, end-to-end fiber, internet network services priced at a little more than $53 per month, authorities said.
PROVIDENCE — The Rhode Island Commerce Corporation has awarded multimillion dollar contracts to Verizon and GoNetspeed to help deliver faster broadband internet services to three areas in the state for households that lack internet at home and are in lower-income communities.
Officials billed the effort to expand faster and affordable internet services to thousands of locations across the state as core to the economic fortunes of Rhode Island.
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“Access to reliable broadband is a modern-day necessity — and no community should be left behind,” Rhode Island’s Secretary of Commerce Liz Tanner said in a news release. “This investment — and others to come — are essential for the future economic success of Rhode Island.”
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Westerly Town manager Shawn Lacey said that the projects would help students, particularly those in low-income areas.
“These much-needed funds will expand educational and economic opportunities by providing affordable access to high-speed internet in parts of our community that are unserved or underserved,” he said in the statement.
Jamestown Town Administrator Edward Mello said the investment would help provide better internet services to close to half of the town’s residents.
“This $2 million investment will create further opportunity for our residents to work and learn from home,” Mello said in the statement.
In Newport, City Manager Colin Kennedy said the investment would help “historically underserved neighborhoods and communities” to access faster broadband services that had been lacking in those areas.
The Capital Projects Fund, from which the contracts announced on Friday were awarded, has a goal of expanding fast internet services to areas across the state that currently don’t match the Federal Communications Commission’s benchmark of what constitutes fast broadband services. The regulator’s standard of high-speed internet service is one that has download speeds of 100 megabits per second, and upload speeds of 20 megabits per second.
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“This initial investment from the state Capital Projects Fund is part of a larger effort by the Commerce Corporation’s ConnectRI program to connect all remaining unserved and underserved locations — meaning locations without access to 100/20Mbps service — across Rhode Island to affordable, reliable, high-speed internet,” Rhode Island Commerce said in the release.
Omar Mohammed can be reached at omar.mohammed@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter (X) @shurufu.