Image
Fast, affordable Internet access for all.
NYC RFI For Better Connectivity: Responses Due January 19th
By
on
On November 15th, the City of New York announced that it was looking for ideas to bring high-quality connectivity to every resident and business. Their goal is to get every one connected by 2025; they’re starting with a Request for Information (RFI) to solicit ideas for potential strategies and partnerships. Responses are due January 19th.
The Big Apple’s effort comes on the heels of San Francisco’s decision to invest in municipal broadband to connect the entire city. New York’s RFI states that they will use all their assets — from rooftop to, to poles, to organizational resources — to move their efforts along so New Yorkers can enjoy fast, affordable, reliable connectivity. City leaders want to exhaust all avenues and are encouraging both public and private sectors to become involved in the initiative.
The Vision
In their vision, New York City leaders have identified five goals they wish to achieve through better broadband infrastructure:
Promote competition in the residential and commercial broadband markets.
Provide high-speed residential Internet service for low-income communities currently without service.
Increase investment in broadband corridors to reach high-growth business districts, with a focus on outer-borough neighborhoods.
Promote seamless user experience across public networks to create high speed access across the boroughs.
Explore innovative ways to provide high-speed Internet to homes, businesses, and the public.
At this point, they’re open to any technology or business model that can achieve these goals and is future proof.
Resources
As part of the RFI, the city provides links to New York’s essential reports and information about assets, including information about franchise agreements, micro trenching rules, and Wi-Fi hotspots. There’s also a link to the Queensbridge Connected program, the high-speed Internet service for folks living in the Queensbridge Houses. We spoke with the city’s Senior Advisor to the CTO Joshua Breitbart in May about the project during episode 254 of the Community Broadband Bits podcast.
With about 8.5 million people distributed over an area of about 300 square miles, the community is the most densely populated in the U.S. Most people living multiple-dwelling units (MDUs) within its five burroughs and income levels vary dramatically.
Geoterm
Related Stories
Boulder, Colorado Gets Ready to Roll on Citywide Fiber Network
With the construction of its 65-mile dark fiber backbone nearly complete, city officials in Boulder, Colorado are now ready to move into the next phase of their plan: build out a citywide fiber network. Last week, the city issued a Request for Information (RFI) “to gauge the interest of for-profit and nonprofit entities in forming a public–private partnership (PPP) with the city to make Gigabit per second-class bandwidth available to all Boulder homes and businesses.”
Syracuse, NY Votes to Provide Low Cost Fixed Wireless Broadband to Low Income Households
City officials in Syracuse, New York have formally approved a new project to provide heavily discounted wireless broadband to low-income city residents.
Our New Building for Digital Equity Podcast Debuts Today
Our new podcast series – Building for Digital Equity – debuts today with an insightful conversation with Margaret “Meg” Kaufer, President of the STEM Alliance in Westchester County, New York.
NYC Co-op Told To Pull Free Service From Affordable Housing After City’s Reversal On Open Access Fiber
New York City has scrapped its plan to build a promising open access fiber network. Not only did that stark reversal leave many partner ISPs high and dry after years of planning, some local community-run ISPs now say the city is forcing them to remove existing free service to affordable housing developments.
Dryden, NY Launches Municipal Fiber Network
Dryden, New York, population 14,500, has formally launched the town’s municipal broadband network, becoming the first municipality in the state to provide residents with direct access to affordable, publicly owned fiber.
New York City’s Ambitious Broadband Plan Is A Shadow Of Its Former Self
In 2020, New York City officials unveiled a massive new broadband proposal they promised would dramatically reshape affordable broadband access in the city.
Instead, the program has been steadily and quietly dismantled, replaced by a variety of costly half-measures that critics say don’t solve the actual, underlying cause of expensive, substandard broadband.