Broadband from the Bottom Up: How Community Organizations Can Shape the Broadband Future

The private market will not close this digital divide on its own. Nearly 28 million American households have a single choice of broadband provider; millions more live in duopolies. Government primarily serves as a regulator—recently, an anti-city, anti-competition regulator—with a few programs that subsidize internet service providers’ (ISPs) service of low-income residents. New models of public-private partnership are essential to achieve universal broadband. The public and civic sectors have three principal tools to shape these partnerships:

• Investing capital directly in building networks, deploying fiber and other infrastructure;
• Making real estate assets available to support broadband deployment —especially street poles, which are essential for 5G deployments; and
• Aggregating demand for internet service to leverage collective buying power.