Localism

A recent article about Silicon Valley residents who formed a co-op Internet service provider might have people wondering what it would take to get the same thing in their hometowns. The most obvious obstacle is the price—in Los Altos Hills, California, residents have had to pay anywhere from $5,000 to $12,000 upfront for a fiber-to-the-home Internet connection. But the company that built the Los Altos Hills network says its model isn't just for wealthy people. "This is not the 1 percent solution, as people derisively call it to my face," Next Level Networks CEO David Barron said.

The Just Transition Fund (JTF) provides grants, technical assistance, peer-to-peer support, and education to help coal communities identify, prepare for, and apply for federal funding for broadband projects that meet local needs. Roughly one-third of residents in the rural and tribal areas the JTF serves cannot access high-speed internet—an inequity that restricts work, education, health care, public services, and civic engagement.

Tribal lands and Native American communities are some of the least connected places in the United States. Infrastructure deployment lags behind that in other rural communities. Only 46.6 percent of housing units on rural tribal lands have access to broadband service. And even when they are connected, households on tribal lands tend to pay more for basic broadband plans and receive lower speeds.

Building a critical mass of informed and organized community voices in the broadband policymaking arena to balance the historical presence of private industry is a long-term capacity challenge in California—and in other states. How do digital equity advocates make their voices heard during the rulemaking process for California’s $6 billion statewide broadband rollout? The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has new resources and authorities to be a partner to local governments and other agencies in closing the digital divide.

Heartland Forward is a nonpartisan, nonprofit “think and do tank” focused on improving economic performance in the center of the United States. Its Connecting the Heartland initiative aims to boost internet availability, speeds, and adoption rates across America’s heartland.

The digital divide needs to be closed for society to grow, but without the high demand to ensure a return on investment, many smaller, less fortunate communities risk falling behind in a widening gap. The longer larger companies wait to prioritize these regions, the further isolated the people who live there may become from the rapidly digitizing future. Who will take ownership to bring those communities across the digital divide?

For community leaders striving for digital equity, I am happy to share Pathways to Digital Equity, a guidebook to help communities evaluate and meet specific connectivity needs.

America’s libraries have deep experience in meeting digital equity needs for people of all ages and backgrounds with unparalleled reach and trust across the nation. Libraries are actively involved in a larger digital equity ecosystem, and often have long-established partnerships and relationships with local and regional groups that can be leveraged to achieve community broadband equity goals for vulnerable populations.

The Hoopa Valley Tribe has worked hard to connect its northwestern Californian community to high-speed internet despite the barriers to access, adoption and application that Tribal members face.

The Federal Communications Commission set guidelines for two pilot programs aimed at increasing both awareness of and participation in the Affordable Connectivity Program, which provides a discount of up to $30 per month toward internet service for eligible households (and up to $75 per month for households on qualifying Tribal lands). On October 11, the FCC provided an update on the implementation of the pilot programs.