Local/Municipal

City officials in Syracuse (NY) have formally approved a new project to provide heavily discounted wireless broadband to low-income city residents. The plan is being made possible courtesy of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), $123 million of which has been doled out to Syracuse city leaders for various urban improvement efforts. After issuing a request for proposals (RFP) in 2022, Syracuse officials say they’ve selected Community Broadband Networks FLX to help build the fledgling, city-owned network.

To maximize the impact of the Biden-Harris administration’s historic infrastructure, manufacturing, and clean energy investments, the US Department of Labor announced the availability of $80 million in funding through its Building Pathways to Infrastructure Jobs Grant Program. The Investing in America agenda, which includes legislation such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), Inflation Reduction Act, and CHIPS and Science Act, is creating millions of good-paying jobs in renewable energy, transportation, and broadband infrastructure sectors, and the Biden-Harris administrat

Narrowing the digital divide between those who can’t afford a computer or internet access and those who can is the goal of a program taking place in several communities in Essex County, including Haverhill (MA). With the support of a regional program, Haverhill residents are getting help in the form of free computer classes, free computers and free internet access from the nonprofit MakeIT Haverhill. In 2021, the nonprofit Boston-based Tech Goes Home partnered with the Essex County Community Foundation on a pilot program covering 50 households across five program sites: Lawrence Community W

Low-income students in the St. Vrain Valley School District in Longmont (CO) will soon have access to free broadband services thanks to a private LTE network deployed by the City’s municipal fiber provider, NextLight. In 2014 NextLight built a municipal fiber network in Longmont that currently covers 44,000 locations and provides service to around 26,000 customers. NextLight also provides fiber connectivity for the St.

Alaska Communications says that after a successful pilot of fiber-to-the-home service in 2022, it plans to extend its fiber network to another 14,000 homes over the course of 2023. Alaska Communications’ fiber network already serves some neighborhoods in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Soldotna. The fiber service offers three pricing tiers of symmetrical speeds up to 2.5 Gbps.

Representatives of the Federal Communications Commission visited Baltimore to hear about residents’ experience of digital discrimination in the city. Some said the city’s past continues to affect technology access today. Some residents told the FCC that the city’s majority-Black population is concentrated in areas where internet service is slow. Others said multi-generational households often lack the funds to pay for high-speed internet service.

Thousands of East Texans are part of a petition challenging the accuracy of the Texas Broadband Development Map that shows internet availability and speeds across the state.

A new broadband network for Colrain, Charlemont, Heath, Leyden, and Rowe (MA) that prevents major outages and improves the resiliency of internet access will be completed by June 30, 2023. The system creates three backhauls and a 10-gigabyte circuit connection shared between the towns: one in Rowe, one in Charlemont, and one in Leyden. The project also increases redundancy to prevent internet outages caused by downed utility poles, fires, or other natural disasters.

Some of Syracuse’s poorest neighborhoods will soon have free broadband service. City lawmakers approved a $3.5 million plan to build a new city-owned wireless network. Syracuse will use federal stimulus money to provide service in 10 Census tracts on its south, southwest, and near west sides.

US Reps. Richard Hudson (R-NC) and Anna G. Eshoo (D-CA), co-chairs of the Congressional NextGen 9-1-1 Caucus, introduced the Next Generation 9-1-1 Act to accelerate federal efforts to modernize the nation's aging 9-1-1 systems. The Next Generation 9-1-1 Act, which passed the House last Congress, would authorize $15 billion in federal funding to help state and local governments deploy Next Generation 9-1-1 systems across the country.