News

The Cleveland, Tennessee city council has approved the creation of the Cleveland Utilities Authority, the first step in allowing the city-owned utility to get into the broadband business. Of the initial $72 million investment, $64 million will be funded by public-issued debt, and go towards construction of the network, which Cleveland Utilities states should begin in March of 2024 and be completed in “roughly two to three years” barring complications.

Maryland officials have announced that the state is doling out $92 million in new broadband grants to expand access to affordable broadband. The latest round of funding was made possible via the Connect Maryland Network Infrastructure Grant Program, and will help expand broadband access to 14,500 unserved locations statewide.

In partnership with the Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative (SRBWI), today ILSR is releasing a new report that examines the emerging link between high-speed Internet infrastructure, access to healthcare, and the economic implications involved. The report – “Increased Wellness and Economic Return of Universal Broadband Infrastructure: A Telehealth Case Study of Ten Southern Rural Counties” – has particular relevance for Black women living in rural broadband deserts as it details how universal, affordable, broadband infrastructure would return $43 million per year using telehealth across 10 counties in the Black Belt of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi.

Brieana Reed-Harmel, manager of the municipal-owned Pulse fiber network in Loveland, Colorado, shares her experience leading the city through the assessment and feasibility study that led to building a sucessful municipal broadband network. Reed-Harmel covers planning considerations, managing experts, scaling and quality assurance, as well as nurturing the human elements in a technical project

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers continues to make slow but steady progress on legislation that would make federal broadband grants tax exempt, providing significant relief for big and small companies alike trying to bridge America’s stubborn digital divide. Telecom industry watchers have been warning for years that upwards of 21 percent of new grants would need to be paid back to the United States government in the form of taxation, complicating project financing and scale.

Geospatial software licenses and training are available to Tribes and can be a huge help for building their own broadband networks. The BIA's Branch of Geospatial Support (BOGS) offers free geospatial software, geospatial training, and geospatial technical assistance to more than 900 BIA employees and 4,000 Tribal personnel.

On the latest episode of our Building For Digital Equity podcast, we are joined by Aneta Lee, a FUSE Corps Fellow working with the city of Birmingham, Alabama to strategize and conceptualize around the city’s role in closing the digital divide in Magic City.

Representing 26 towns across Massachusetts, from Cape Cod to Chelsea, an informal group of mostly town officials have formed the Massachusetts Broadband Coalition in search of a way out of a broken monopoly broadband market to ensure that everyone in their individual communities has access to high-speed Internet. The newly-formed coalition has recently started to meet monthly to share information about what kind of alternatives there might be, or could be, to the big cable monopoly provider in their towns.

Hoping to ensure it can actually spend its share of historic broadband funding, Montana lawmakers have tweaked the state’s restrictions on community broadband. However, experts say most of the state law’s pointless restrictions remain intact, undermining state efforts to bring affordable, next-generation broadband access to Montana residents.

Save the date and join us June 7 at 3 pm ET for the second Building for Digital Equity event of the year, which comes weeks ahead of when states will receive their BEAD funds from the bipartisan infrastructure bill. As with previous B4DE events, this will be another virtual gathering that will offer up strategies to help simplify the complexities (and opportunities) of broadband connectivity.

The South Carolina Broadband Office (SCBBO) has announced 56 newly funded projects through its new broadband grant program. South Carolina historically hasn’t been a hotbed of community broadband deployment, and is one of 17 states that have passed restrictions on municipal network creation, funding, and expansion. Still, there are numerous electric cooperatives in the state busy creatively bridging the digital divide that stand to benefit from an historic infusion of new grant funding.

With the construction of its 65-mile dark fiber backbone nearly complete, city officials in Boulder, Colorado are now ready to move into the next phase of their plan: build out a citywide fiber network. Last week, the city issued a Request for Information (RFI) “to gauge the interest of for-profit and nonprofit entities in forming a public–private partnership (PPP) with the city to make Gigabit per second-class bandwidth available to all Boulder homes and businesses.”

This week we are giving you a double dose of our new Building For Digital Equity podcast. Episode 4 features Kim Ilinon and Ella Silvas, two Interactive Media Design students from the University of Washington-Bothell. And in Episode 5 we talk with Susan Corbett, Executive Director of the National Digital Equity Center, about how she went from being the owner of a small ISP in rural Maine to a national digital equity advocate.

Connect Humanity and the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) have struck a new $7.9 million coalition partnership they say will help deliver affordable, next-generation broadband networks to more than 50 communities across 12 Appalachian states. ARC has already been awarded $6.3 million via its new Appalachian Regional Initiative for Stronger Economies (ARISE) program, which aims to solve the connectivity crisis in a region that lags well behind the national average.

Digital Marin, currently housed within the Marin County Information Services and Technology Department, is coordinating a fiber project and leaning towards a municipally-owned, open-access solution modeled after Ammon’s standout network in Idaho.

City officials in Syracuse, New York have formally approved a new project to provide heavily discounted wireless broadband to low-income city residents.

In our third episode on the Building for Digital Equity podcast, we are joined by Mikhail Sundust, Executive Director of the Digital Connect Initiative (DCI) at GRTI - Gila River Telecommunications Incorporated.

Florida’s state broadband office is doling out $144 million in grants to 58 different broadband expansion projects across 41 Florida counties.

Earlier this month, a new Colorado bill was introduced that, if passed, would rid the state of a law designed to protect monopoly Internet service providers (ISPs) from competition.

In the second episode of our new Building for Digital Equity podcast, Gina Birch talks about how she trained digital navigators at the Ashbury Senior Computer Community Center in Cleveland to help enroll eligible households into the Affordable Connectivity Program, and why working with trusted messengers and organizations is key