Exploring Maine’s State Broadband Initiative, With Brian Allenby

In the fourth installment of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation’s Access America series, Jess talks to Brian Allenby, program operations and communications director for the Maine Connectivity Authority (MCA). They chat about the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, Maine's digital equity intensive approach, and how the state has been promoting regional broadband plans and activity. "The Regional Tribal Broadband Partners were convened as a working group to share information at what was happening at that local level. There’s a history of municipally and community-driven broadband in Maine, and so to help try to start rolling those up beyond just an individual community, but to start helping those communities communicate with each other, maybe build a project out across a few communities or a region. Regional Tribal Broadband Partners were also critical in our broadband planning efforts, both for the digital equity plan and for the BEAD planning, because they helped convene a lot of the focus groups and do a lot of that outreach at that in-between level."