Communities Unlimited (CU) has launched the Rural Broadband Institute (RBI), a new center built to close the connectivity gap in rural America through technical assistance, research, training, and policy advocacy. The institute draws on CU’s more than 50 years of offering infrastructure technical assistance to rural communities and direct broadband work across some of the least-connected communities in the country — and it launches at a moment when that work has never mattered more.
According to the most updated National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) data available as of April 2026, millions of Americans still lack access to high-speed internet, most of them in rural communities. The communities CU works in — Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Alabama — are overrepresented in that number.
CU’s Broadband Team has been working on this problem since 2022, when the organization hired Catherine Krantz as Area Director to build a rurally-focused broadband program. Since then, the team has authored more than 80 Broadband Assessments and Digital Opportunity Plans and is currently supporting that same number of communities and counties across four states with multi-year broadband planning.
“I’ve spent over a decade watching rural communities get left behind — not for lack of will, but for lack of support,” Krantz said. “The Rural Broadband Institute was formed to give that work a home and to bring national broadband thinkers into the same room.”
"That's how we close the gap: not with a single program, but with a network of people who refuse to let these communities be forgotten."
Over the past year, CU convened broadband industry experts through a series of “Broadband Conversations,” drawing in professionals from deployment to policy. The goal: identify what’s still broken, decide what to do about it, and build the resources rural communities actually need. Starting in 2026, the RBI will offer memberships for rural broadband advocates alongside a full range of services including technical assistance, training, research, and policy support.
Krantz brings more than a decade of rural broadband experience in economic development planning, grants management, and broadband planning across CU’s seven-state service area. She leads a team of broadband technical assistance providers and community broadband planners, all working to remove barriers to deployment in communities that have been waiting the longest for connectivity.
