{"id":101850,"date":"2025-08-29T22:42:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T22:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/101850\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T22:42:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T22:42:06","slug":"amid-legal-battle-kentuckys-middle-mile-network-faces-uncertain-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/101850\/","title":{"rendered":"Amid legal battle, Kentucky’s\u00a0middle-mile network faces uncertain future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly five months after Kentucky internet service providers received a 30-day disconnection notice<\/a> from KentuckyWired, the state\u2019s open-access middle-mile broadband network is still online \u2014 but its fate hinges on an ongoing legal battle.<\/p>\n

The disconnection notices went out in\u00a0mid-April after the Kentucky Communications Network Authority, or KCNA, terminated its contract with Accelecom in January. Accelecom, the private telecom firm\u00a0the state selected in 2021 to manage the sale of last-mile services from the\u00a03,200-mile fiber optic network, was accused of breaching its contract with the state by also selling its own last-mile services, which the state alleged presents a conflict of interest, kicking off litigation regarding the potential contract breaches.<\/p>\n

The state still has not found a new administrator. Another hearing is scheduled in the Franklin County, Kentucky, Circuit Court for Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Kentucky State Sen. Gex Williams on Friday introduced legislation<\/a> that would extend the lifespan of KentuckyWired and reorganize the authority of KCNA to the Commonwealth\u2019s Office of Technology \u2014 effectively disbanding KCNA and terminating its employees, including Doug Hendrix, KCNA\u2019s executive director. <\/p>\n

Williams\u2019 legislation would also establish a new board that would provide oversight to management of KentuckyWired\u2019s operations. All of the funds that had been provided to KCNA would return to the state\u2019s general fund. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn the Information Technology Oversight Committee, we\u2019ve had a lot of testimony about the concern for customers. There\u2019s a lot of things going with lawsuits, with contracts, with all sorts of things, but customers are the focus,\u201d Williams said during an interim committee hearing on Friday. \u201cWe had representatives from [the Wireless] Internet Service Provider Association that has tens, if not hundreds of thousands of rural customers who face disconnection on a 30-days notice\u2026 This is a holding pattern until the audit comes in next summer, so we can just maintain our customer connectivity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The network, which kicked off as a\u00a0public-private partnership<\/a>\u00a0in 2013, serves rural and other hard-to-reach areas in Kentucky, along with several state and local government offices, universities and other critical service providers. While the network is still online, rural ISPs worry about what the network\u2019s uncertain future could mean for Kentuckians.<\/p>\n

TJ Scott, the chief operating officer and general manager of Kentucky ISP Broadlinc, testified before the Kentucky Information Technologies Oversight Committee\u00a0this month regarding concerns about the network going dark amid the search for a new administrator. He testified alongside Steve Schwerbel, director of state advocacy at the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association, and John Gill, owner of the rural ISP Kentucky Fi.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is going to affect rural Kentuckians, real taxpayers \u2014 people in rural Kentucky will either lose service or their service quality will be affected drastically,\u201d Scott told StateScoop. \u201cAnd we wanted our legislators to know what that really meant to the end user [is] this is affecting taxpayers in Kentucky and people who need need broadband service.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scott\u2019s company, Broadlinc, serves just over 30,000 locations in northern Kentucky. He asked that the state consider \u201cpumping the brakes\u201d on finding a new administrator for the network, and urged KCNA to do everything it can to ensure a continuity of service while it conducts the search process and deals with its court battle with Accelecom. Accelecom declined to provide a statement before publication.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, our customers are stuck in the middle of this argument. \u2026 They\u2019ve started an RFP process to find a new middle buyer or provider \u2014 and again, nobody has ruled that this has to happen yet \u2014\u00a0so we\u2019re just asking the state to take a slower approach with this, make sure that there is continuity of services throughout the whole process, no matter what happens,\u201d Scott continued.<\/p>\n

Scott said it falls on the state and KCNA to ensure continuity. The agency, in its 30-day disconnection notice sent out in April, claimed Accelecom was responsible for ensuring customers did not lose internet service. <\/p>\n

StateScoop could not locate a request for proposals for a new KentuckyWired administrator on the state\u2019s eProcurement<\/a> website, indicating KCNA hasn\u2019t begun the process. According to<\/a> the KCNA website, it held a meeting last May inviting ISPs, regional carriers and network operators to help draft an RFP. KCNA did not respond to requests for additional information. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy final statement to the last month was, \u2018Listen, if the if the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and the toll collecting service that they have a contract with \u2014 which collects tolls for the bridges in Louisville \u2014 if they have a dispute, they\u2019re not going to close the bridges because there\u2019s some dispute,\u201d Scott said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to find a new toll collector and keep the bridges open in the process, right? And that\u2019s really all we\u2019re asking them to do with the KentuckyWired network: Keep the network running, keep everybody connected.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are ways to do this. You just need to get everybody at the table and make it happen,\u201d he continued. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\"Keely<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tWritten by Keely Quinlan
\n\t\t\tKeely Quinlan reports on privacy and digital government for StateScoop. She was an investigative news reporter with Clarksville Now in Tennessee, where she resides, and her coverage included local crimes, courts, public education and public health. Her work has appeared in Teen Vogue, Stereogum and other outlets. She earned her bachelor\u2019s in journalism and master\u2019s in social and cultural analysis from New York University.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly five months after Kentucky internet service providers received a 30-day disconnection notice from KentuckyWired, the state\u2019s open-access…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[4286,1638,773,49595,49596,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-101850","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"tag-broadband","9":"tag-internet","10":"tag-kentucky","11":"tag-kentuckywired","12":"tag-state-local-news","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}