Brian Vo of Connect Humanity: Broadband Is a Utility. Finance It Like One.

Brian Vo started thinking about markets in eighth grade, packing bag lunches for a local shelter and noticing that each bag fed exactly one person. He wanted a way for one unit of effort to do more than that. The question took him through Wharton, investment banking and private equity during the financial crisis, McKinsey, and more than a decade in impact investing. Today he is the CEO of Connect Humanity, which finances communities that want to build and own their own internet.

His argument is that the digital divide is a market failure we have seen before. The reasons he hears for not wiring low-income and rural places are that people can't afford it, don't want it and wouldn't know what to do with it. Power companies said the same things about farmers before rural electrification. He breaks the problem into three failures. Broadband is a utility but isn't regulated like one. About 70% of Americans can buy from only one or two providers. And the capital on offer is either public grants or private equity, with little in between. That is how a family in Louisiana ends up paying $120 a month for dial-up in 2025.

Then we get into the money. Well-run fiber networks earn 60 to 80% EBITDA margins, which Brian argues makes them a credit asset rather than a private equity one. He explains the tools Connect Humanity uses to put communities in charge. Digital equity covenants let a lender put a provider in default for breaking an affordability promise. Broadband foundations buy a network and lease it back until the community owns it outright, in about ten years. We also cover why Connect Humanity is becoming a CDFI and open-sourcing its underwriting, the fight over a state grant in East Carroll Parish, Louisiana, and what a $500,000 loan unlocked in Macon County, Alabama.

Brian spoke on "Ownership and Investment Innovation as a Solve for Market Failure" at the Ownership Economy Summit in New York on October 1. We're planning 2027 now. If you or your organization want to be part of it as a program partner, speaker or sponsor, write to jahed at ownership economy dot com.

Show Notes

- Connect Humanity —

- Connect Humanity's CDFI Fund award, and its plan to become the first CDFI dedicated to broadband —

- Brian's case for community finance, with the pilot fund numbers, East Carroll Parish and Macon County (ImpactAlpha, June 2026) —

- The Rural Electrification Act of 1936, the precedent Brian opens with —

- Deloitte's "Closing the digital divide":

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- Switzerland's four-fibre model, with one fibre for Swisscom and three for competitors (swissinfo) —

- East Carroll Parish: the challenge to Louisiana's first GUMBO broadband grant —

- BEAD, the $42.45 billion federal broadband program —

- The Washington Monthly's rebuttal on BEAD, monopolies and the maps —

- The states that restrict municipal broadband (BroadbandNow) —

- Cory Doctorow's original "enshittification" essay —