Supporting the Increasingly Important Missions of Community Anchor Institutions

Community anchor institutions should be at the center of any comprehensive national strategy to promote the availability and use of High-Performance Broadband. Community anchor institutions use broadband to provide essential services to their community, such as education, information access, and telehealth services. But in the 21st century, community anchors’ missions are moving beyond their walls. Libraries no longer deliver knowledge that is housed only within their buildings or the covers of hardbound books. Public education today cannot exist separate from the ability of students and teachers to use broadband connections—both in school and out. And health-care facilities see and monitor patients both in hospitals and in their homes. More broadband connections are needed in order to reach more community anchor institutions. A 2018 Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition report authored by CTC Technology & Energy found that 60 percent or more of community anchor institutions in the United States lacked robust and scalable connections that fiber networks would provide. For example, in low-density metro areas (with between 363 and 1,669 residents per square mile), the connection rate was only 50 percent. CTC estimates that all unconnected community anchor institutions in the continental United States and Hawaii (outside of Alaska) could obtain fiber connections for between $13 billion and $19 billion and that major savings could be obtained through the implementation of best practices that include competitive bidding processes and aggregated purchasing.

[Jonathan Sallet is a Benton Senior Fellow]