Local government delivers equitable broadband during pandemic

The pandemic has highlighted the need for county and city governments to provide their workers and K-12 students with internet connections and related technology, especially laptops, experts said during a June 4 CompTIA webinar titled “Stretching the Limits: Broadband Capacity and Availability in a Crisis.” Albemarle County (VA) a largely rural area that is home to the University of Virginia, partnered with its public schools division to provide surplus laptops to social service workers who didn’t have them. With those laptops, county employees were able to work from home and connect to remote desktops on their work PCs.  All schools -- elementary through high -- were connected to fiber beforehand and allowed access to Wi-Fi from school parking lots so anyone could park and connect, said Mike Culp, director of information technology for the county, which also set up access points at libraries and community centers. Montgomery County (MD) took a different approach, said Mitsuko Herrera, director of the ultraMontgomery broadband economic development program at the Office of Broadband Programs. Montgomery's public school system distributed more than 66,000 Chromebooks and 5,200 hotspots so students could learn from home. “We particularly shied away from having students have Wi-Fi in the car or in parking lots because we felt that they were safer at home,” Herrera said. The county is considering outdoor Wi-Fi, however, as part of its larger strategy to offer support outside access and social distancing, she said.