Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake sees expanding Internet access as a justice issue and wants to make sure every Baltimore resident benefits from City assets, including fiber optic cables. To that end, the City is examining how it can use its conduit and fiber to improve Internet access.
We have previously covered Baltimore and its consideration of public investments to expand Internet access after both FiOS and Google decided not to invest there.
In the interview below, Mayor Rawlings-Blake expands on why this is important, saying "You can't grow jobs with slow Internet... people don't want to invest in communities where they feel like they are running through sludge, trying to catch up with other businesses," going on to say, "People want to be on the cutting edge."
A recently published report should help bolster the case that the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) – which subsidizes the cost of monthly Internet service for income-eligible households – won’t just help more Americans get broadband access, it can also incent Internet service providers (ISPs) to make infrastructure investments in unserved and underserved areas. The report suggests the ACP might be more than just a temporary solution to an immediate need for affordable access, and has the potential to promote something more structural – investment in communities that would have previously been bypassed by ISPs.
Say hello to our new American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellow. In September, Jessica E. Auer will join the CBN team as a postdoctoral fellow to undertake a two-year project that advances policy initiatives in support of expanding broadband access and digital sovereignty for Tribal Nations across the U.S. It’s the second time ACLS has selected ILSR as a host organization for a Leading Edge Fellowship, which embeds humanities and social science PhDs with nonprofits committed “to solve problems, build capacity, and advance justice and equity in society.”
Profile on the people behind Project Waves, a non-profit organization founded in 2018 to bring broadband to mostly low-income households in Baltimore City.
West Des Moines, Iowa is making steady progress on a $60 million open access fiber-optic conduit system to expedite the delivery of affordable fiber citywide.
The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) is pleased to announce that it has been selected by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) as a host organization for a Leading Edge Fellowship for the second time. The application window has opened for recent PhDs in the humanities to apply for a two-year, full-time fellowship to be a Tribal Broadband Policy Analyst. The fellow will continue and contribute to foundational work by ILSR on Internet access in Indian Country while gaining experience in the regular portfolio of research and policy activities by the Community Broadband Networks initiative at ILSR.
Since the launch of the Affordable Connectivity Program last January, millions of households have benefitted from the $30/month connection subsidy to help pay for their broadband bills. The program serves as a necessary bridge in a failed marketplace, dominated nationally by a small number of regional monopolies driven by shareholders to charge the highest price possible.