Community Anchor Institutions

To promote digital advancement (that is, a new mindset to leverage investments in digital access and adoption to promote economic justice in the digital economy), the Digital Integrators Pilot Program recommends the following actions for stakeholders:

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has awarded 18 grants as part of the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program (TBCP). These new grants, totaling $224,479,717.83, bring the total of the program to $1.5 billion awarded to 112 Tribal entities. With funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), these grants will expand high-speed Internet network deployment and digital skills training to improve access to education, jobs, and healthcare on Tribal lands.

Our recommendations for addressing the three prongs of digital inequity – connectivity, device ownership, and access to training – will require a community-led “all hands on deck” approach. Each recommendation will require commitment from the public sector – including the city of Chicago, the state of Illinois, and/or the federal government – as well as our city’s private sector and broader civic community. Community anchor institutions – both government institutions like CPS and Chicago Public Library (CPL) – as well as community-based nonprofits, will play a critical role.

Chicago-based Crosstown Fiber aims to build, maintain, and operate a robust fiber network with a specific focus. The company will offer fiber infrastructure built below ground to provide unique routes and strategic alternative paths between data centers and other entities. Crosstown custom designs, builds, leases, and maintains high-capacity, high-bandwidth, dark fiber optic networks providing customers the ability to use a redundant ring structure with a network route spanning approximately 400 route miles across all corners of Chicago. Crosstown’s underground network is designed for custo

The Federal Communications Commission is committing nearly $84 million in a new funding round through the Emergency Connectivity Program (ECP), which provides digital services for students in communities across the country.

A partnership led by the Maine Connectivity Authority is seeking to build a 530-million "middle-mile" fiber broadband network that would serve tens of thousands of residents and businesses across the state. Middle-mile infrastructure is the regional fiber optic infrastructure made up of high-capacity fiber that carries large amounts of data at high speeds over long distances and between various elements of telecommunications infrastructure. The network would encompass 131 communities, representing over 11,000 unserved residents and local businesses.

Connect Humanity is working with the city of Orangeburg (SC) and Claflin University to extend the university’s broadband out into the surrounding community at affordable rates.

Educators around the country began to engage in dialogue regarding the digital divide as they recognized the reality that many students did not have access and connectivity as once believed. So a new concept has emerged: “digital equity.” It’s an important idea, and one to which educators and education institutions should pay close attention. Educators and college leaders should build on efforts to expand digital equity and digital inclusion in education by considering the following:

At the height of the pandemic in April 2020, the City of Chicago learned that roughly 1 in 5 K-12-aged students did not have internet access at home. Schools had shifted to remote learning, and Chicago needed to act quickly to ensure that students could continue their education from home.

An ambitious new plan by the state of Colorado seeks to end the state’s digital divide once and for all — and to do so using fiber, the gold standard for the fastest internet connections. Brandy Reitter, the executive director of the Colorado Broadband Office, said she took the position because she wanted to do impactful work “that was well funded” so she could actually fix the problem. Now she’s leading the state’s plan to use $1 billion in federal money to improve internet service, not just to help those with no internet access, but those with subpar service.