Louisiana expanded broadband internet access through a federal program. Now the future is uncertain.

Yahoo

19-03-2025

Cajun Broadband started in 2017 as a way to provide wireless internet to a few neighbors in Broussard. In 2022, the company was awarded 11 GUMBO 1.0 grants. (Photo courtesy of Cajun Broadband)
In a small office in Broussard, the phones are constantly ringing. The unlabeled home of Cajun Broadband sits on the edge of the fiber internet rollout in Louisiana, but the question staff members are consistently hearing is, 'When are you coming here?'
'We get at least 10 calls a day with people asking if we are coming where they are,' says Victoria Disher, Cajun Broadband customer service representative.
In 2025, Louisiana was the first state in the nation to qualify for a $42 billion federal program to greatly expand internet access, a significant improvement for local businesses and homes. But due to the Trump administration's reevaluation of the program, the much-anticipated broadband expansion is in limbo.
Since 2020, the Broussard-based internet provider has connected thousands of homes with the help of federal funds through previous grant programs.
The delayed federal funding would allow the company to offer fiber internet to another 10,000 homes, businesses and community spaces, many dealing with unreliable or outdated connections.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
In the summer of 2022, Louisiana allocated more than $176 million to Granting Unserved Municipalities Broadband Opportunities, aptly called GUMBO grants. The project's main goal was to get high-speed internet connections to unserved and underserved communities in Louisiana, mostly through the expansion of fiber optic cable networks across 48 parishes.
But unlike gumbo, which doesn't ask for much in terms of ingredients, fiber GUMBO involves many moving parts at the federal, state and local levels, with several pots being stirred at once.
The main ingredient to the first phase of the expansion, GUMBO 1.0, is small internet service providers that snapped up a majority of the more than 70 projects available.
'We were the first provider to start and finish a GUMBO project in the state,' says Chris Disher, Cajun Broadband co-founder, co-owner and co-director.
Small, often locally owned internet service providers like Cajun Broadband acted quickly on their broadband grants, getting thousands of connections up and running in less than two years after the grants were awarded.
Once completed at the end of this year, GUMBO 1.0 will have brought improved or more affordable internet options to roughly 65,000 homes, businesses and community partners in 48 of Louisiana's parishes. Funds for the state project were allocated by the federal treasury's Capital Projects Fund.
But GUMBO 2.0, which would greatly expand on its predecessor's successes, is currently being held for review by President Donald Trump's Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, a long-time critic of the $42 billion federal Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment program known as BEAD.
Federal immigration officials have extensive technology at their disposal
In a statement explaining his decision, Lutnick called the value of the program into question, noting that it had 'not connected a single person to the internet,' blaming the Biden administration's 'woke mandates, favoritism towards certain technologies, and burdensome regulations' for the program's lack of results.
However, none of the funds allocated for infrastructure to be expanded have been paid out yet.
While the program was created by Congress in 2021, it took several years for accurate maps showing current connectivity levels to be produced, for applications to be drafted based on the needs identified in the mapping process, and for those applications to be approved by the federal government.
Louisiana was the first state to successfully complete this process in January, and locals say they're ready to put shovels in the ground — if it wasn't for Lutnick's decision to put a pause on funding.
'We're ready to go,' says Veneeth Iyengar, executive director of ConnectLA, Louisiana's Office of Broadband Development. Iyengar defended the state's process for identifying areas in need and the companies to serve them with the help of the federal funding program.
'We ran an efficient process, and the process that we ran adopted all sorts of technologies to ensure universal coverage,' he says. While started during the previous administration of Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, the program's goals are in line with current Republican Gov. Jeff Landry's priorities, according to Iyengar.
'From the governor's perspective, his challenge statement to us was to ensure that every single nook and cranny of the state, wherever people live, need to receive access to high speed, full reliable internet,' Iyengar notes, pointing out that the state's application for BEAD funds outlined plans to do just that.
Fully realized, the proposed plan would connect more than 140,000 locations in the state at a cost of $1.3 billion, according to a release by the Biden administration.
The spending pause leaves providers like Cajun Broadband and their rural Louisiana customers in the lurch. The company was expecting $33 million in BEAD funding to cover roughly 15,000 locations between both GUMBO programs, reaching areas never thought possible to connect.
Disher and his co-founder, Jimmy Lewis, started Cajun Broadband in 2017 when Disher's family grew frustrated with their AT&T internet connection, and Lewis came to him about renting fixed wireless internet services off of cell towers.
Public cell towers allow fixed internet connections to be rented off them and supplied to homes. Disher and Lewis rented a signal off a tower for $10,000 and set up an antenna on Disher's pine tree for connection.
They then rented the fixed wireless to their neighbors in Broussard at 60 Mbps download speeds, a good speed for streaming on multiple devices, and the company slowly started to grow until it totaled 170 towers from Morgan City to Ville Platte.
Then, when Disher lost his day job in the oil field in 2018, Cajun Broadband truly had to succeed as a business.
Louisiana researchers leave labs to rally for science at State Capitol
'I got laid off. My other partner got laid off, and we had to make this work,' Disher says. 'We had to make it work to feed our family.'
Luckily for Disher and other internet providers, the COVID-19 pandemic made reliable and available internet a must-have for everyone from city and parish governments to your local takeout place.
Internet access became a top priority as home internet connections are needed to meet work, education and entertainment needs often at the same time.
'COVID was insane for us,' says Disher. 'Everybody was at home.'
The company's customer base tripled in size at that time.
In Louisiana, the strategy was to get fiber in the ground as quickly as possible, prioritizing the least connected places, with rural Acadiana near the top of the list.
Disher and Lewis started to establish close relationships with local governments that were looking to improve their internet connections.
'Small providers like Disher's understand their local communities,' says Iyengar. 'They understand what makes providing broadband and access to local communities effective in their areas, especially when it comes to permitting and network design and creating and employing people.'
What they didn't know, they were willing to learn. 'We didn't know anything about fiber, but we went to conferences and we learned,' says Disher. 'We asked a lot of questions.'
Their first contract came from St. Martin Parish during the pandemic. They connected roughly 77,000 feet of fiber to 600 homes and businesses using funds from the American Rescue Plan Act. They provided free internet to a community center in Cade, which also functions as the office of the local water district, with the new, improved connection now allowing customers to pay their bills online.
Through grant-supported fiber, Cajun Broadband is able to provide free internet service to community centers, churches and firehouses across the region. Every GUMBO project included several 'community partners' that received the service for free.
Kechia Lee is the coordinator at the Cade Community Center in St. Martin Parish and a former household wireless customer of Cajun Broadband. When she still lived in Cade, she says Cajun Broadband was able to connect her home hidden deep behind the trees, something other providers had failed to do as effectively. She's seen the improvement in connection at the community center first-hand.
'We now never lose service, and it's improved our productivity,' says Lee.
Disher and Lewis, along with parish governments across the state, went all in on the GUMBO 1.0 grant process in 2022, gaining 11 grants worth $27 million, almost all covering expansion projects in Acadiana.
Once completed, these grants will have led to roughly 2,500 new customers, according to Disher, assuming the usual take rate on Cajun Broadband's fiber.
Through the grant process, Cajun Broadband was able to take many of its old rural customers off of wireless connections and switch them to faster, more reliable fiber connections.
In Iberia Parish, for example, major segments of the population served were and still are on fixed wireless by Cajun Broadband or on copper connections, all susceptible to storm outages common in the low-lying coastal parish.
Sixty percent of respondents surveyed in Coteau West, served by Iberia's grant, reported two to 10 outages a day, with 26% reporting more than 10.
Cajun Broadband's base fixed wireless plan is only a few dollars cheaper than its base fiber plan, but fiber offers night-and-day differences in speed and reliability.
Through GUMBO 1.0, Cajun Broadband was able to offer a broadband option to more than 1,000 homes and businesses in Iberia Parish. The family package now available is 100 Mbps download and upload speeds, greatly surpassing a majority of previous services, and with little to no outages expected.
The new fiber-based service will also be slightly cheaper than its fixed wireless predecessor. Despite those improvements, according to the FCC mapping, much of Iberia Parish is still unserved or underserved, with many homes served with no or unreliable internet.
Providers and the state are looking to address these areas, but BEAD's delay puts these plans up in the air.
This report was first published by The Current, a nonprofit news organization serving Lafayette and southern Louisiana. Founded in 2018 by local journalists, The Current's in-depth reporting connects Lafayette to stories that matter and helps readers understand how our community works — and how we can make it better.
SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE