Community First: How GoNetspeed's Chris Brooks Is Closing the Connectivity Gap One Town at a Time
Key Highlights
- Chris Brooks believes successful broadband deployment depends on earning trust and support from employees, construction partners, local governments, and residents.
- GoNetspeed focuses on underserved communities with limited broadband choices, aiming to provide competition and better connectivity rather than dominate the market.
- Inconsistent state regulations and slow pole attachment processes—particularly in states like Massachusetts and New York—are one of the biggest barriers to expanding fiber networks.
When Chris Brooks talks about broadband deployment, he keeps returning to a single word: buy-in. His teams have it. His construction partners have it. The municipalities he works with have it. Brooks believes communities need it too, and when they don't have it, GoNetspeed works to earn it.
That ethos, which has been refined over years of building fiber in underserved communities across the Northeast, recently earned Brooks the Connect the Unconnected Award, which recognizes telecommunications leaders bridging the digital divide through innovative, visionary, and strategic fiber broadband expansion.
As Senior Director of Operations at GoNetspeed, Brooks has helped grow the company from a small regional startup into an operation active in 11 states, with a track record of building in underserved markets where residents have had limited broadband options.
Why He Does It
Brooks didn't set out to become a broadband advocate. His path began in 2020 and 2021, during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when he was working for two small, family-owned upstate New York telephone companies overbuilding their legacy copper networks with fiber.
"I was able to go into homes where young students were forced to do school," Brooks said, "and literally had children crying because they were worried that they weren't going to be able to complete their schoolwork."
The memory has stayed with him. "Seeing children that want education, want to continue to grow in life, and don’t have the ability because they didn't have broadband internet—that's a really good motivation."
That motivation shapes how GoNetspeed selects its markets. The company often targets communities where residents have few high-quality broadband options, particularly those reliant on legacy DSL or a single cable provider.
"We're not going to take 100% of the customers," he said. "That's not even our goal. Our goal is to just provide an option for the residents of the community.
Seeing children that want education, want to continue to grow in life, and don’t have the ability because they didn't have broadband internet—that's a really good motivation.
Building Trust
GoNetspeed's approach is distinguished not only by where it builds, but by the way it builds. Before a single permit is filed, the company's government affairs team is already in the room with local officials. Marketing follows. Then construction crews arrive, and they're expected to carry the company's message too.
"The construction team is really the first face in the community," Brooks said. "And again, they buy into what we're doing. They're huge components and a huge mouthpiece for us in the field."
That community integration extends beyond the build itself. GoNetspeed employs field events managers and last year participated in hundreds of community events, from nonprofit partnerships to golf tournaments, not just to sell subscriptions, but to be present and available.
"It's face-to-face contact," Brooks said. "And if you're truly genuine, people are going to believe in what you're saying."
Not every community rolls out the welcome mat, though. Brooks acknowledges a vocal minority of residents who question why GoNetspeed is coming at all. Brooks sees much of that resistance as generational, pointing to changing demographics and newly elected local officials.
"We're going to build it one way or another, because we're giving the majority an option of a new provider," he said.
Partners, Not Contractors
GoNetspeed's internal buy-in philosophy extends to its construction relationships. Brooks avoids the word "contractor,” preferring "partner”—an intentional distinction.
"We have great partners that have been with us a long time," he said. "They see our vision. They know where we're going, and they're good to us, and we're good to them."
The company puts its branding on partner vehicles and operates on a simple shared-stakes premise: "We don't succeed if you don't succeed."
That stability has paid dividends as BEAD funding begins to draw new entrants and new opportunists into the construction market.
"As BEAD continues to ramp up, contractors are going to come out of the woodwork and just want to make the quick buck," Brooks said. "But we work so closely with everybody, whether it be sales contractors, construction contractors, splicing contractors, that they are GoNetspeed."
GoNetspeed itself has not pursued BEAD funding, and the federal program's recent budget reductions have had little direct impact on the company's trajectory.
"That's the great part about being privately owned," Brooks noted. "It's our money."
The Pole Problem
If there's one thing Brooks would change about broadband deployment in the United States, it's access to utility poles.
GoNetspeed has been actively engaged in Massachusetts for four to five years, working with the state to reform pole attachment rules, a fight Brooks describes as one of the most concrete and underappreciated obstacles to connecting underserved communities.
"Every state has different rules," he said. "Getting on poles in Connecticut is extremely simple. New York, Massachusetts—it's years to get on the poles."
The core problem is structural: pole owners, primarily power companies and incumbent telephone providers, have little competitive incentive to expedite access for providers who will directly compete for their customers.
"We're going to come in and be really successful and take all of their customers," Brooks said. "They have no incentive to put us on the pole."
It didn't matter what your title was, it was all hands on deck.
GoNetspeed has been advocating for Massachusetts to adopt an FCC One Touch Make Ready framework, a policy that would streamline the process for all attachers. The effort appears to be gaining traction: in March, Massachusetts regulators initiated a joint rulemaking to revise the state's pole attachment rules, with proposed amendments that include OTMR procedures.
"It's not just us," Brooks said. "It's for every provider.”
From 28 People to T-Mobile
When asked what accomplishment he's most proud of, Brooks didn't point to GoNetspeed's current scale or its announced acquisition by T-Mobile. He pointed to the beginning.
"We had two local, small, hometown telephone companies," he said. "The company needed to stay alive. It had been in business 100 years. And nobody knew what they were doing."
Twenty-eight people, several of them in finance or customer service, with little fiber-to-the-home experience, set out to completely overbuild two legacy telephone networks. In roughly a year and a half, they built 675 miles of fiber. Brooks, then an executive, was crawling around basements doing installs himself.
"It didn't matter what your title was," he said. "It was all hands on deck."
The culture that emerged from that time still defines how Brooks thinks about the work.
"We just became so close," he said. "And they said it was a family-owned company, and everybody was treated like that."
The team sold that network in 2021 to GoNetspeed. GoNetspeed, weeks before Brooks accepted his award, announced its acquisition by T-Mobile: a trajectory from two small upstate New York telcos to one of the country's largest wireless carriers.
Brooks accepted the award on behalf of 750 people. To him, that's the whole point: the recognition belongs to everyone who bought in.
"We have an awesome group of people that come to work and just get things done every day," he said. "And that's why I'm excited about this."
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About the Author
Hayden Beeson
Editor, ISE Magazine
Hayden Beeson is the editor of ISE Magazine at EndeavorB2B. He previously held editorial roles with Lightwave, Broadband Technology Report, LEDs Magazine and Architectural SSL.