In the wake of a federal abandonment of most meaningful Internet equality efforts, California municipalities continue to take the fight for equitable broadband access into their own hands.
That includes Sonoma County, California, where county officials have freshly greenlit expanded plans to provide free broadband access to low income residents.
Target: Affordable Housing
The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors recently announced that it has approved a list of new affordable housing sites that are eligible to receive free Internet for one year.
According to the county, 556 low-income Sonoma County households across 10 different housing locations should qualify for the free broadband service.
The deployments are being made possible by the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which continues to result in some fairly transformative fiber deployments countrywide.
“The Board has prioritized finding creative solutions to broadband infrastructure development in Sonoma County,” Board of Supervisors Chair Lynda Hopkins says of the effort.
“This free internet program is a step toward equity as we continue to pursue public funding and strategic partnerships that can finally close the digital divide facing many of our shared communities.”
The Internet subscriptions purchased by the County will be distributed on a first-come first-served basis to residents of the eligible properties and are good for one year of free service at a speed of 100 megabit per second (Mbps) download and 20 Mbps upload – fees and taxes included.
Sonoma County’s moves come on the heels of widespread Trump administration abandonment of programs designed to improve broadband affordability – particularly among marginalized communities.
In just the last six months GOP leaders have killed a popular program providing discounts to low-income Americans, sued to eliminate a program providing affordable broadband to rural schools, overturned new laws aimed at expanding affordable access because it mentions minority populations, and nixed a popular program providing free Wi-Fi hotspots to rural schoolkids.
Propped up by an ambitious plan to boost broadband competition investing in new last and middle mile broadband grants, dozens of California communities are stepping up. Like the City of Oakland, where the city recently announced plans to build its own open access fiber network with an eye on affordability.
Leveraging the state’s ARPA funds, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has also approved more than $17 million for two open access broadband expansion projects in west Sonoma County.
Cumulatively, California has pledged to fund $3.25 billion on an open-access statewide broadband middle-mile network, with an additional $2 billion earmarked for last mile deployment.
Transforming Digital Landscape With Community Broadband
When it comes to last-mile deployment, municipalities, cooperatives, Tribal entities and community-based nonprofit networks have been buoyed by the CPUC’s Last-Mile Federal Funding Account (FFA) in particular.
In May, we released a two-part dashboard based on the CPUC’s data that helps to visualize just how transformative the program has been for community broadband networks.
In the first round of funding, which has allocated a little more than $1 billion of the $2 billion program, nearly 100 grant applications were submitted proposing community broadband projects that covered more than 40 counties across the state.
Since the CPUC began awarding grants last summer, 45 separate grants have been awarded to community broadband projects in the past year alone.
You can explore the Interactive Dashboard that helps visualize the success of community-based projects in California here.
Header image of Sonoma County Transit bus at Windsor station courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
Inline image of map of Sonoma County CA courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
Inline image of bridge in Sonoma County courtesy of Frank Schulenburg, CC BY-SA 4.0 Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International
