Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has begun winding down a program that helps low-income people pay for internet service, which would affect 67,548 subscribers in Allegheny County alone. FCC officials said most of the funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program will run out by the end of April without additional appropriations from Congress.

Computer Reach, which employs 24 full and part-time employees and has an annual budget of $580,000, provides refurbished laptops and computer literacy training to people most in need. Richard King Mellon Foundation, PNC Foundation, Eden Hall Foundation, EQT Foundation, and Pittsburgh Foundation are among Computer Reach’s supporters. The need for laptops in poor areas far outstrips the availability of computers: social service agencies identified some 2,500 candidates for Computer Reach’s computers and digital help, but the nonprof

Officials from Washington County (PA) are pressing ahead with an ambitious internet access expansion plan by earmarking up to $50 million to connect 5,000 homes, schools, and businesses. The project, which is the latest phase of a plan to connect all of the county, will unfold over six to nine months, leverage additional capital funds from vendors, and target poorly served areas for service, including the eight municipalities comprising the McGuffey School District, which is the most underserved school system in the county. Altogether, 700 miles of fiber optic cable will be strung in the la

In Beaver and Fayette Counties, Pennsylvania, the "Connect Beaver County Broadband Program" by the Butler, Pennsylvania-based Armstrong company, and Arkansas-based Windstream, was chosen to provide internet services to several locations throughout the two counties. The projects are a part of the counties' larger efforts to bring new broadband and improved services to parts of 24 municipalities within the county by utilizing nearly $20 million in American Rescue Plan (ARPA) funding. The counties aim to expand broadband service where service is poor or unavailable.

Beaver County (PA) Commissioners took the wraps off a two-year plan to bring the internet to about one-third of the county where logging on is slow or impossible, giving the onetime smokestack-industrial heartland a head start in connectivity. In all, some 2,000 homes in parts of 28 of the county’s 54 municipalities will be able to get online by 2024, according to Commission Chair Daniel Camp III.

Washington County (PA) has begun a three-year, $30 million project to expand internet access in the rural county, which is located about 35 miles south of Pittsburgh (PA). The first baby steps in the project will bring service to about 50 homes in Avella, home to fewer than 1,000 people, and also to the nearby Meadowcroft Rockshelter and Historic Village (PA).

The Pennsylvania Turnpike is ready to make money — potentially tens of millions — by selling space on a new broadband system along the toll road in Eastern Pennsylvania. The agency has nearly completed two projects totaling $95 million to install fiber-optic cable under the berm of about 220 miles of the highway, split almost evenly between the main line from Harrisburg to the New Jersey border and the Northeast Extension.

The Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission is teaming with Carnegie Mellon University, Allies for Children and others to take a regional approach to improving broadband service in the 10-county area in an effort to take best advantage of $65 billion in recently approved federal infrastructure funds. For more than a year, the planning agency has been working mostly behind the scenes with consultant Michael Baker to identify broadband dead spots, areas with insufficient service, and residents who can’t afford service, under a program dubbed SWPA Connected.