Localism

When talking about the benefits of broadband, it’s easy to overlook how broadband has become the glue that brings people and communities together. This is becoming particularly important for rural communities but matters to people everywhere. Rural communities have been rapidly losing other forms of media that were the focal point in the past. 2004 was the peak of the newspaper business in terms of readership and revenues. Since then, the number of journalists has been cut in half.

It is my firm belief that counties that form partnerships with regional internet service providers (ISPs) to build fiber networks--funded by both Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program grants and local matching grants--will be the ones to win BEAD grants. But this is not an easy choice. For an area that doesn’t have broadband today, the BEAD grants sound like a far distant opportunity. It’s hard to think that any recipients of BEAD grants will be constructing networks any sooner than 2024 – assuming by then that they’ll be able to get the needed fiber and electronics.

The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society previously highlighted the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's (NTIA) Broadband Infrastructure Program awards given to 5 states and 1 US territory–Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Washington, and Guam.

As the city of South Lake Tahoe (CA) grows and tries to develop new economies, officials are focusing on improving broadband access for all the residents and businesses. The Centers for Disease Control classified access to broadband as one of their social determinants to health, which are “conditions in the places where people live, learn, work, and play that affect a wide range of health risks and outcomes.” The City is no different in recognizing the importance of broadband. Before the city can provide broadband to all, it must take stock of what it currently has.

Sterling, a town of about 8,000 in Worcester County (MA), has become another example of a community controlling its broadband destiny. The Sterling Municipal Light Department (SMLD) is building the Local Area Municipal Broadband (LAMB) network, which will bring fiber-based internet to Sterling’s residents and businesses. Set to be fully completed in the fourth quarter of 2024, SMLD will proactively notify residents as construction begins in their neighborhoods.

The pandemic brought all kinds of innovative approaches to stubborn challenges: Small towns in Grafton County (NH) saw opportunities for business development, innovative school programs, and upgrading the way the local government functioned. But political will didn’t prevent the county from making these changes; poor internet service did. A lot of hard work, political capital and local and federal funding has been committed to improving Grafton County’s connectivity, resulting in the launch of broadband service in the Town of Bristol (NH) in September 2021.

Summit County, Ohio, is planning to spend $75 million on a fiber internet project that will include building a 125-mile fiber optic ring to connect public safety entities in all 31 county communities and help expand internet access for residents and businesses. There are also plans in the works to work with private internet service providers, who could spend up to $300 million on the project, making the total figure for a potential public-private project nearly $400 million.

With an unprecedented amount of federal funds to build broadband networks flowing into individual states, lawmakers in some states are doing the bidding of the big monopoly Internet Service Providers and potentially blowing a once-in-a-generation chance to invest in the locally-accountable infrastructure that offers the best chance to bridge the broadband gap for millions of families once and for all.

AT&T is opening a new Connected Learning Center inside the Asian Pacific American Community Center (APACC) in San Francisco (CA) to provide internet access and education tools to those who face connectivity barriers vital to their long-term success. It’s part of the AT&T Connected Learning initiative and the company's $2 billion commitment to address the digital divide through internet accessibility, affordability and safe adoption. This is the second Connected Learning Center that AT&T has opened in California.

Government leaders in the Ozarks (MO) are taking steps to increase broadband access in their communities. Access to fast and reliable internet is an issue city leaders in Republic (MO) have heard about for years, and it was only made worse by the pandemic. “The discussion has always been there, at least since I’ve been here,” says David Cameron, Republic City Administrator. “We heard about it a lot when people were home.