Community Anchor Institutions as Launching Pads for High-Performance Broadband Deployment

In the 2020s, public policy should recognize that bits are books, bits are blackboards, and bits are basic tools of medical practice. In other words, broadband networks that run to schools or libraries or health-care facilities are not built to carry only scholastic or literary or medical information. Community anchor institutions can serve as a launching pad for community-based broadband access and, in places where broadband has already been deployed, more broadband competition. Congress has already provided that past funding recipients of middle-mile networks, like the connections to community anchor institutions that reach into a community but do not reach to residences within a community, must operate on a non-exclusive basis.

[Jonathan Sallet is a Benton Senior Fellow]