In Massachusetts a consulting program is helping local municipalities navigate digital equity planning. There is no flow of money to municipalities under said program. Instead, the Municipal Digital Equity Planning Program, spearheaded by the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI), pairs towns and cities with consultants to develop strategic plans for digital equity within their communities. Among other things, the program is meant to inform a municipality of provider market conditions, challenges/barriers to internet adoption analysis and the strategies a municipality can take to increase adoption of broadband. Michael Baldino, director of the Massachusetts Broadband Institute, said municipalities are well positioned to understand and address the needs of their residents, take local ownership of digital inclusion activities and encourage stakeholder buy-in of strategies to address those needs. By offering technical assistance to local governments, he said, MBI is closing “a critical data and documentation gap.”

The nation’s largest prison and jail telecommunications corporation, Securus, effectively defaulted on more than a billion dollars of debt. After decades of preying on incarcerated people and their loved ones with exploitative call rates and other predatory practices that have driven millions of families into debt, Securus is being crushed under the weight of its own. In March 2024, the company’s creditors gave the corporation an eight-month extension to pay up, urging its sale to a new owner to stave off an otherwise imminent bankruptcy. Securus is one of two corporations that dominate roughly 80 percent of the U.S. prison telecom industry, forming an effective duopoly that thrives on the captive markets found inside the nation’s lockups. Both companies are owned by private-equity firms: Securus, by Platinum Equity, and ViaPath (previously Global Tel Link), by American Securities. The slow death of the largest player in this space is not accidental. It follows six years of intense advocacy to expose the vulnerability of the prison telecom industry’s business model on both ethical and economic grounds. Organizers have waged a strategic war against Securus, educating investors and the public about the company’s predatory practices while successfully advocating for legislation and regulation to rein them in.

[Dana Floberg is the director of corporate campaigns at Worth Rises, where they lead strategic efforts to end corporate exploitation of incarcerated people across prison industry sectors. Morgan Duckett is the corporate campaigns associate at Worth Rises, where he has helped carry out the organization’s mission since 2021.]