The Broadband Lifeline in a Pandemic: How Your Community Can Quickly Deploy Free Wi-Fi to Meet Urgent Needs at Public Housing and Other Locations

Over the past several days we have heard from numerous communities seeking guidance for delivering broadband to unconnected households as fast as possible to meet urgent,  critical needs for remote work and education. Free community-provided Wi-Fi can be a lifeline during the pandemic. Given that the current crisis doesn’t seem like it will be short-term, a more robust alternative is to set up a Wi-Fi network for multi-dwelling buildings such as public housing developments. This approach needs to be customized for each building but would include the same key elements:

1. Ensure there is adequate backhaul to the building.
2. Install Wi-Fi hotspots.
3. Connect users to the network. 
4. Set up user support. 
5. Set policies to lessen the risk of network congestion.