Level of Government

Millions of dollars later, LinkNYC still hasn’t fixed the city’s stubborn digital divide or the privacy issues raised half a decade ago. LinkNYC, unveiled in 2014, was an ambitious plan to replace the city’s dated pay phones with “information kiosks” providing free public Wi-Fi, phone calls, device charging, and a tablet for access to city services, maps, and directions.

Colorado’s five-year plan for investing millions of federal funding to expand fast, reliable, and affordable broadband across the state. The Roadmap was developed in coordination with the Colorado Digital Government Strategic Plan to ensure all Coloradans, as well as future generations, have equitable opportunities to access the countless benefits provided by high-speed internet. CBO encourages feedback on the Broadband Roadmap and will continue to travel throughout the state talking about affordability, accessibility, and digital literacy.

To help policymakers, leaders, and residents better understand the state's digital divide, the Community Development Network of Maryland has a new map that shows where gaps in digital equity are more (or less) severe throughout the state. The Maryland Digital Equity Index shows how digital inequity afflicts urban and rural parts of Maryland.

Lieutenant Gov Suzanne Crouch (R-IN) and the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs have awarded $760,727 in third-round funding from the Indiana Connectivity Program to expand broadband access to 197 addresses across 28 Indiana counties.

Nearly 450,000 residents in the state don't have adequate broadband, according to the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. The office has been tracking the data for years and will roll out its own map in the fall of where Tennesseans lack access to high-speed internet of at least 100 Mbps downstream and 20 Mbps upstream. This measurement is new for the department, so new that the Federal Communication Commission doesn't have that measurement on their own maps, which they believe will show up in the next iteration of data in late 2022 to early 2023.

Gov Jared Polis (D-CO) and the Colorado Office of Information Technology (OIT) launched the Colorado Digital Government Strategic Plan.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau, in conjunction with the Office of Economics and Analytics, has authorized Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (Auction 904) support for 1,865 winning bids. This is the 14th round of funding authorization for the RDOF program. All information, including the winning bids found in Attachments A and B, can be found here.

On October 6, 2022, the U.S. Department of the Treasury approved Michigan's plan to use its full Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund allocation to support broadband expansion in the state.

Spectrum is constructing a fiber-optic network expansion project that will bring gigabit broadband and other Spectrum services to over 4700 homes and small businesses in Wexford County (MI). Spectrum services are already available to some residents and small business owners in the buildout area. The buildout is part of Spectrum’s approximately $5 billion investment in unserved rural areas, which includes more than $1 billion won in the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction.

Investor-owned utilities—usually large, publicly traded electricity providers that are regulated by state public utility commissions—can have a major impact in delivering broadband to rural communities and other underserved areas by allowing broadband providers to leverage existing utility infrastructure for new high-speed internet connections. Virginia is one of the first states to employ this strategy through its Utility Leverage Program, which aligns the state’s broadband goals with efforts to modernize its electrical infrastructure to successfully expand broadband service into areas tha