Government Technology

A new momentum has taken hold of state government work to support broadband infrastructure, access and usage. This momentum, experts say, is a direct result of an increased societal understanding of broadband as a utility, rather than as somewhat of a frivolous luxury.

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.

Stakeholder reactions to the Federal Communications Commission's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund have been mixed. The new FCC money will be divvied up in two phases, with the first distributing the majority of the funds, $16 billion, to Census blocks where data shows no service is available. What some stakeholders take issue with, however, is that the FCC is using Form 477 data, which has driven its funding in the past but has also been widely criticized.

For the past several years, the Government Technology editorial team has picked apart State of the State addresses, looking for clues about new initiatives and areas of focus that will touch technology. As of Feb 3, 2020, about two-thirds of governors have delivered these speeches. Increasingly, governors are using their platforms to underscore the importance of making sure all residents, regardless of where they live, have options to get online. Internet access has profound impacts on opportunities in education, jobs, health care and nearly every other facet of modern life.

In the coming years, 5G wireless Internet stands poised to remake the online world, its unprecedented speed enabling advances in everything from public safety to virtual reality. Within this progress, however, there exists another near-certainty — segments of the population will be left out of the advantages.

Even if broadband coverage isn’t the problem in a local area, the cost of high-speed Internet service may still hold back families who don’t have much money.

Conventional wisdom says a town with less than 200 people wouldn’t have the resources to establish and maintain high-speed Internet for its residents. But Mount Washington, located in Berkshire County (MA) contradicted such wisdom in Nov 2017 when it activated its municipal fiber broadband service.  From one angle, the case of Mount Washington is a miracle.