The US Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration awarded $301,030 to the Colorado State University (CSU) System for a planning grant to promote and enhance economic development in rural Colorado.
Broadband expansion is the goal of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) $42.5 billion Broadband, Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant program, but the initiative won’t be successful without a sufficient focus on digital equity and community engagement, said NTIA officials.
Digital inequity persists as one of the most pressing social issues of our time. Access to digital technology and reliable Internet dictates whether or not we can access education, healthcare, search and apply for jobs, and even meaningfully engage in democracies.
Once each year, community-based broadband providers come together from small towns and rural areas across America for one of the largest gatherings focused exclusively on the business, the people, and the technology of rural broadband. Gather with your neighbors and the network of solution providers and advocates working on behalf of companies like yours who are working on behalf of the communities you serve.
I want to take on the phrase ‘technology-neutral’. This phrase is being used to justify building technologies that are clearly not as good as fiber. The phrase was used a lot to justify allowing Starlink into the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) reverse auction.
As Los Angeles County officials work with community coalitions to improve high-speed Internet access in underserved communities across the region, the Digital Equity LA Summit focused on the challenges ahead: urging state officials to fix the broadband priority maps the state will use to target where to invest $2 billion in state broadband grant funds with the state months away from receiving over a billion additional dollars from the federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. Representing the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) were Michael Mullaney, Preside
The Federal Communications Commission recently released a “pre-production” draft of its new National Broadband Map in an effort to provide more precise details about where internet service does and does not exist in individual locations across the US. While much attention has been paid to how the map represents broadband service for individual households, there is much less understanding among the general public with regards to how the map represents individual community anchor institutions, such as public schools, libraries, and hospitals.
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