Exploring New Opportunities with Fiber Networks

As state and local officials gear up to build fiber networks through Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) and other programs, opportunities abound for leveraging various funding to demonstrate how to get the most economic and societal benefits out of their networks, according to US Ignite Co-founder and CEONick Maynard. “Our mission is to help support underserved communities by helping them with their main challenges, but also through economic development or startup and research commercialization challenges,” said Maynard. Going into its second decade of operation, US Ignite currently works with 50 cities around the country to ensure digital equity alongside broadband access, exploring how to use smart city data responsibly, monitoring environmental conditions to make communities safer and healthier, and driving wireless innovation with other researchers at several startups. The educational non-profit intentionally works with a variety of real-world environments, including urban and rural areas, from smaller communities to large cities. Project OVERCOME is the organization’s effort to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of broadband solutions available to communities wanting to expand internet access to underserved and unserved populations. Fiber plays a key role in enabling connectivity for community centers and to support last mile wireless deployments, creating best practice playbooks for communities to leverage. US Ignite is also taking its work in helping build a broadband investment tool for New York State and expanding it to encompass the nation.