San Jose Fund Set to Pay Out First Round of Broadband Grants

The San Jose Digital Inclusion Fund in California was established about a year ago as a mechanism for closing the digital divide in this largely affluent San Francisco Bay Area city, part of Silicon Valley. The program is expected to generate about $24 million over 10 years by collecting lease revenue from telecommunications companies as they attach 4G and 5G small cell communications infrastructure to city assets such as streetlights and city-owned buildings. A large portion of the lease revenue goes to the digital inclusion fund grants, said Dolan Beckel, director of civic innovation and digital strategy for San Jose, with some of the lease revenue used to fund the operations and governance of the broadband and digital inclusion programs. So far, San Jose has permitted more than 1,100 small cells, said Beckel. San Jose’s telecom lease rate for citywide/at-scale access to its assets is $750 a year. “For every one [small cell] that goes up, the lease revenue is committed to the Digital Inclusion Fund,” Beckel explained. “And the Digital Inclusion Fund is focused on three things: providing access at home for the disconnected, providing the appropriate device and then providing them the digital literacy skills they need.” The city selected the California Emerging Technology Fund as the implementation partner to help it work with the community-based organizations which will receive the grants, to be distributed to qualifying residents.