With historic levels of federal funds flowing into states to build broadband infrastructure and implement digital equity plans, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society is looking to cultivate a new generation of broadband scholars, practitioners, and advocates working on broadband access, adoption, and equity issues.

To that end, Benton is putting out a call for prospective fellows through its Opportunity Fund Fellowship program, seeking resumes and project proposals focused on identifying obstacles to broadband access.

The deadline to submit proposals is August 31.

According to Benton Institute's Vice President of Programs Revati Prasad, the questions the program is most interested in exploring are:

“What obstacles prevent people from subscribing to broadband? How does the cost of broadband service impact adoption? Does a concern for privacy and safety dissuade people from using the Internet? How might climate change adversely impact building broadband infrastructure? What national or state policies could delay or disrupt broadband deployment and/or digital equity efforts?”

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However, Prasad was quick to add, prospective fellows shouldn’t consider those questions to be exhaustive and is encouraging interested applicants to “propose other approaches and questions to the overarching theme of barriers to building and using broadband networks,” adding that the program will “especially welcome applications that focus on historically marginalized communities.”

Data has long proven that open access fiber networks result in faster, better, and more affordable broadband service in the markets where they operate. Nothing has proven this more consistently than Utah-based UTOPIA Fiber, an inter-local agency collaborative venture that just added three additional partner ISPs.

With the three more independent ISPs joining the network, 18 different providers now offer affordable fiber service to residents in the 21 cities UTOPIA serves.

“After a careful vetting process through an RFP, WiFi Pros (Bountiful City), ETS (Layton City), and Fusion Networks (Salem City) were invited to join the UTOPIA Fiber network, effective May 1, 2024,” the organization said in a recent announcement.

The ISPs that compete over the UTOPIA open access fiber network offer a variety of different speed and pricing options, and its three new partners are no exception. Most of the pricing is dramatically lower than what’s generally been made available in U.S. broadband markets – including well developed major metropolitan markets like New York City.

More cities and towns across the U.S. are exploring municipal broadband as an increasingly attractive and effective approach to bring ubiquitous, and affordable, high-speed Internet to its residents and businesses.

Now, a new handbook has been published that is tailored to guide local officials in navigating the logistical, technical, financial, and political challenges along the way.

Hot off the presses this week comes “Own Your Internet: How To Build A Public Broadband Network” – a project of the American Association for Public Broadband (AAPB), published in partnership with the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.

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“This handbook is a key part of AAPB's strategy to double the number of public networks in the next five years, supporting communities in leveraging these networks for economic development, smart city initiatives, and attracting new residents," AAPB Executive Director Gigi Sohn said in announcing the handbook release.

Benton Executive Director Adrianne B. Furniss said the collaboration in publishing the guide made sense because “every community has a stake in this broadband moment—and they must have the tools they need to decide how they will meet their connectivity needs. We trust that this handbook is one of many tools communities will use to assess their situation and plan for a connected future.”

In its ongoing effort to support a new generation of broadband scholars, practitioners, and advocates, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society has put out the call for new Opportunity Fund Fellowship applicants for the 2023-2024 cycle.

The Institute is looking for fellowship proposals that are particularly focused on:

• Coalitions and capacity building at the state and local levels to implement and influence broadband programs
• The extent and impact of digital discrimination
• Building sustainable, affordable broadband for BEAD and beyond
• The impact of broadband on communities - the benefits and the vulnerabilities
• Evaluation frameworks to measure the impact of broadband funding

While that is not an exhaustive list of possible proposals, the Institute says it will “welcome other proposals of critical importance to our field that can better inform our current or emerging broadband policy debates,” adding that “we especially welcome applications that focus on historically marginalized communities.”

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Fellowships will range from $5,000 to $20,000 with a tenure ranging from 6 months to 2 years.

The application deadline is August 15.

More information about the fellowship can be found here. Questions about the fellowship opportunity should be emailed to [email protected].

As part of its ongoing effort to support a new generation of broadband scholars, practitioners, and advocates, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society has put out the call for fellowship applicants looking to further their studies on broadband access, adoption, equity, and use.

In a recent newsletter, the Institute says they “are interested in supporting a range of projects that can better inform our current or emerging broadband policy debates, either through critical research about the future of the Internet in our communities or the development of best practices and tools to advance our field’s work.”

More specifically, they are seeking “proposed projects (that) can yield either practice or research-focused publications or multimedia content.”

Some potential topics include:

• How are grassroots organizations and coalitions working to advance digital equity?
• How can we best measure and map the availability and quality of broadband?
• What state and local policy levers can influence broadband availability and adoption?
• How does improved access to broadband impact local economies and communities?
• What resources and information do state legislators or government agencies need to ensure universal broadband access and adoption?

The Institute goes on to explain how those topics are “by no means an exhaustive list” and that applicants “should feel free to propose other ideas of critical importance to our field;" noting also that the Institute is especially interested in applications that focus on historically marginalized communities.

In an effort to facilitate the deployment of innovative broadband solutions in underserved areas - both urban and rural - the nonprofit organization US Ignite recently partnered with National Science Foundation (NSF) and Schmidt Futures to launch ProjectOVERCOME. 

The Benton Institute released a report in November naming the seven communities that the project will focus on: Blue River, OR; Buffalo, NY; Cleveland, OH; Clinton City, MO; Detroit, MI;Loiza, Puerto Rico; and Yonkers, NY.

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In the report that was released, Benton spotlights each community and the technologies they will use. The technologies include Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), fiber, fixed wireless and hotspots. 

According to the initiative's guidelines, these communities were chosen because of how they vary in population, demographics, regions of the country, housing, and industry. The program will work with these communities to experiment in deploying innovative Internet connectivity solutions on a 12-month timeline. 

The projects will collectively result in not only education, outreach, and local broadband organizing development efforts, but provide direct connectivity to more than 700 households.

For example, in a CBRS deployment in New York,

There are more than 600 wireline municipal broadband networks operating across the United States today. And while the ongoing discussion about our information infrastructure by Congress has placed a renewed emphasis on publicly owned endeavors to improving Internet access, the reality is that cities around the country have been successfully demonstrating the wide variety of successful approaches for decades.

In this report, published by the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society, ILSR's Sean Gonsalves, Christopher Mitchell, and Jericho Casper profile how six community networks in a diverse range of places stepped up to meet the needs of their communities, bringing faster, more reliable, and more affordable service. 

It covers:

• Huntsville, Alabama
• Conway, Arkansas
• Ocala, Florida
• Dalton, Georgia
• Ammon, Idaho
• Cheshire County, New Hampshire

The projects above, the report shows, run the gamut from municipally owned and operated fiber networks, to cable system upgrades, to last-mile open access networks, to public-private partnerships.

From Benton:

Communities seeking to create a more competitive broadband market and/or target low-income neighborhoods with high-quality, modestly priced service are increasingly building their own networks, whether in partnership with ISPs or on their own. Local governments considering this option have to do their homework to find appropriate consultants, vendors, business models, and more.

But as the communities profiled here demonstrate, there are many models and opportunities to improve Internet access.

As the Biden administration fleshes out the details on the President’s proposed American Jobs Plan, which includes as much as $100 billion to fund expanded high-speed Internet connectivity and bring much needed competition to the broadband market, opponents (mostly Congressional Republicans and lobbyists for the big telecom companies) are tossing the word “overbuilding” around, ostensibly as a warning against wasteful government spending.

Case in point: U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the ranking Republican on the Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee recently told Bloomberg News, “The president’s broadband proposal opens the door for duplication and overbuilding.”

Meanwhile, many of his constituents in his home state point to how broadband infrastructure has actually been underbuilt by incumbent providers, leaving the Magnolia State and its broadband hungry residents in the digital dust.

Ideology vs. Reality 

“For a poor state like Mississippi, being left behind by a 21st century economy is tantamount to economic death. Senator Wicker's concern about overbuilding and duplication is certainly not the case for the families and small businesses he represents across broad areas of this rural state in economic distress,” is how Oleta Garrett Fitzgerald, Children's Defense Fund Southern Regional Director and head of the Southern Rural Black Women's Initiative, responded to Wicker’s assessment.

To put it mildly, she doesn’t feel that the state has adequate Internet access networks today.

A year ago we wrote about Illinois’ $420 million commitment to broadband expansion, and now the first round of grant winners has been released. Together they total $50 million in state funds matched by $65 million in additional money for 28 projects by 18 different Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that will, ultimately, connect 26,000 homes, farms, community institutions, and businesses in the state. It represents the first milestone in what is a significant commitment to closing Illinois' broadband gap.

Lots of Winners, Some Caveats

The Broadband Grant Program offers applicants up to $5 million in funding for projects with the stipulation that they match it with an equal or greater amount of other, nonstate funds. First-round winners consist of both middle- and last-mile builds touching at least 27 counties throughout the state. For example, Cook County received a little under $2 million to expand its Chicago Southland Fiber Network (CSFN). CSFN provides backhaul services to many, including the Illinois Century Network — which serves over 3,400 public K-12 schools, universities, and libraries. Their application committed to focusing “on fiber paths that will provide distribution and host last mile service platforms addressing those communities with the greatest need, municipalities with no fiber assets . . and key regional education campus facilities.” 

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