Illinois

Lessons learned from the Technology in the Parks initiative in Columbus Park have inspired comprehensive legislation with three major components: 

1. Firstly, we propose to expand the Federal Communications Commission E-rates program to include local parks. This initiative is crucial in bringing broadband access to these community spaces, aligning with the program's existing coverage for schools and libraries.

The Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts (AOIC) announced that two Illinois Probation Departments/County Court Services Departments were each awarded a $5,000 grant from the Foundation for Rural Services-Community Service Grants Program. The Foundation for Rural Services (FRS) is a nonprofit organization that works with the National Telephone Cooperative Association (NTCA) Rural Broadband Association to sustain and enhance the quality of life in rural America. Effingham County Probation Department’s ‘Discovery to Recovery Outpatient Substance Abuse Program’ will “provide new equipme

When the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) suggested Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) grant rules, a lot of industry folks assumed that states would largely follow the NTIA suggestions and that there would be a lot of similarity in the BEAD grant rules between states. It turns out that the opposite is happening, and many State Broadband Offices are taking unique approaches. In this article, I compare the BEAD grant rules for Georgia and Illinois.

President Joe Biden announced over $5 billion in new investments from his Investing in America agenda—including the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act—to advance rural prosperity, economic development, competition, and sustainability. $274 Million to Expand Critical Rural High-Speed Internet Infrastructure: the Department of Agriculture announced nearly $274 million across 16 grant and loan awards to expand access to high-speed internet for people living and working across eight states.

The Federal Communications Commission committed $37.7 million in a new funding round through the Emergency Connectivity Fund Program, which provides digital tools and services to support students in communities across the country. This funding commitment supports applications from the third application window, benefitting approximately 100,000 students nationwide, including students in Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington.

One year has passed since Brightspeed became the fifth largest incumbent local exchange carrier (ILEC) in the US, and it’s made some notable progress in its $2 billion multi-year fiber deployment. Most of Brightspeed’s footprint is currently served with copper, but the operator is undertaking fiber builds in 17 states and officially launched fiber service on March 1, 2023.

The Federal Communications Commission committed $37.7 million in a new funding round through the Emergency Connectivity Fund Program, which provides digital tools and services to support students in communities across the country. This funding commitment supports applications from the third application window, benefitting approximately 100,000 students nationwide, including students in Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington. This funding commitment supports approximately 220 schools and school districts, 2 library systems, and 4 consortia.

Director of the Illinois Office of Broadband, Matt Schmit, has been working for over 20 years in economic development, and began his public interest career as a grad student at University of Minnesota. There, he spent his spare time doing consulting work with local communities to take stock of their connectivity needs and make use of federal broadband funding programs.

The Illinois Broadband Lab launched a statewide cohort of digital navigator fellows to plan and coordinate digital equity programs at the local level.

Illinois farmers and communities need broadband internet to thrive. The Illinois Innovation Network (IIN) and its driven partners intend to make that happen by securing federal dollars earmarked for bridging the digital divide. IIN-funded research will help them make their case. It provides attention-grabbing estimates of how much more farmers could produce with reliable internet. Public university partners said the total economic gain of added production that would accompany increased broadband coverage is 3.6% for corn and 3.8% for soybeans.