Connect Humanity, Microsoft Join Forces to Fund Appalachia Broadband

Connect Humanity

The nonprofit digital equity organization Connect Humanity has struck a new partnership with Microsoft to fund the deployment of affordable broadband access to long neglected residents of Appalachia.

The new partnership, outlined in a recent announcement, will leverage the Connect Humanity’s IDEA Fund (Investing in Digital Equity Appalachia) to help finance community-focused Internet Service Providers (ISPs) “best placed to meet the digital needs of residents and businesses in Appalachia’s unserved areas.”

Appalachia – which technically stretches from the Catskill Mountains in New York State to the hills of Mississippi – continues to be among the least connected areas in the nation. Appalachian residents are 31 percent more likely than the national population to lack a broadband subscription, and fewer than 20 percent of households use the internet at broadband speeds.

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Appalachia heat map from ILSR

Only 25 of the existing 423 Appalachian counties meet or exceed the national average for broadband speeds – and all were in metropolitan areas. Given the unreliable nature of FCC broadband maps, Appalachia’s digital divide is likely worse than measurements indicate.

Connect Humanity unveiled the IDEA fund last year, stating the $25 million effort would collaborate with Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) to “create opportunities for local capital to invest in broadband infrastructure” across 13 Appalachia states.

Connect Humanity’s new partnership with Microsoft will be tethered to the company’s existing Airband Initiative, which also helps finance deployment of affordable broadband access to disadvantaged regions all over the world. The collaborators did not specify precisely which communities and ISPs would be targeted by these new funding opportunities.

“With the right partners, it’s possible to build gold-standard internet in every rural and low-income community in Appalachia,” Connect Humanity Chief Investment Officer Brian Vo says of the partnership. “Public investment is necessary but insufficient. It must be paired with capital from partners that prioritize community needs and understand root causes of digital inequity, while grasping the strong economics of community-based broadband. That’s what we have in Microsoft and why we’re excited for their partnership.”

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Appalachian Regional Commission Logo

Last year, Connect Humanity and the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) also announced the creation of a new $7.9 million coalition partnership they say will help deliver affordable, next-generation broadband networks to more than 50 communities across 12 Appalachian states.

The Institute For Local Self Reliance has worked in conjunction with Connect Humanity on their Appalachia Digital Accelerator program, which develops funding and strategic guidance to help connect 50 of Appalachia’s least-connected communities to next-generation broadband networks.

Connect Humanity’s Accelerator program recently unveiled new broadband maps that should provide a more accurate glimpse of the lack of affordable access across Appalachia. The maps allow overlapping comparisons between historically inaccurate FCC maps, over-stated major provider coverage claims, and publicly-available crowdsourced data.

Both Microsoft and Connect Humanity say this latest partnership is intended to serve as a supplement to areas that won’t be receiving any of the $42 billion in federal BEAD (Broadband Equity And Deployment) funding made possible by the 2021 infrastructure bill.
 

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