
Fast, affordable Internet access for all.
In 2014, Mozilla and the National Science Foundation (NSF) created the Gigabit Community Fund to help local communities test new gigabit technologies. This year, projects in Eugene, Oregon, and Lafayette, Louisiana, will receive awards from the fund. Each community will receive $150,000 $300,000. Organizations that want to apply for the funding with their project ideas need to submit applications by July 14, 2017.
Learn more about the application process and the award at the Gigabit Communities website.
The recent announcement described the reasons for adding these cities to the list of past winners - Chattanooga, Kansas City, and Austin:
Why Eugene and Lafayette? Mozilla Community Gigabit Fund cities are selected based on a range of criteria, including a widely deployed high-speed fiber network; a developing conversation about digital literacy, access, and innovation; a critical mass of community anchor organizations, including arts and educational organizations; an evolving entrepreneurial community; and opportunities to engage K-12 school systems. (emphasis ours)
Check out this video on Mozilla and the Gigabit Community Fund:
Update: After publishing this story, we received the official news release from the city of Eugene and the Technology Association of Oregon, which provided a little more information. Specifcally that grants usually range from $5,000 - $30,000 and that the pilot period is typically 16 weeks. You can read the news release here.
Residents of East Carroll Parish are “cautiously celebrating” the decision by Louisiana’s Office of Broadband Development and Connectivity to uphold a $4 million GUMBO grant to bring fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) Internet service to over 2,500 households in one of the most poorly connected parts of the state.
In early August, the city of Holland, Michigan (pop. 33,000) voted to fund the construction of a citywide, open access fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) network. It’s the culmination of almost a decade of consideration, education, planning, and success, and builds on decades of work by the Holland Board of Public Works (HBPW) and city officials to build and maintain resilient essential infrastructure for its citizens. It also signals the work the community has done to listen to local residents, community anchor institutions, and the business owners in pushing for an investment that will benefit every premises equally and ensure fast, affordable Internet access is universally available for decades down the road.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced earlier this week that Louisiana will be the first state in the nation to receive federal grant planning funds to help states prepare for the deployment of high-speed Internet infrastructure and digita
Louisiana’s broadband deployment grant program, GUMBO (Granting Unserved Municipalities Broadband Opportunities), was announced with great fanfare by Gov.
Ashland, Oregon has long been a trailblazer in terms of meeting community demand for faster, more affordable broadband access. The city-owned network has also had a bumpy road—at times being branded as an example of municipal broadband failure. But the network continues to grow as it faces down an urgently-needed pivot toward a fiber-based future. Despite the current economic healthiness of the network and the clear benefits it’s brought to the community over the last twenty years, local officials are talking about divesting instead of making the financial commitment to continue the investment the city has already made.
This morning, the Department of Treasury announced the first round of Capital Projects Fund (CPF) awards to states putting together portfolios to deploy new infrastructure to unserved households.