As California aims to boost broadband competition and Los Angeles County pursues what could be the biggest municipal broadband network ever built, local activists say they’ve made some meaningful recent inroads on both improving broadband mapping, and regulatory reform that should aid the equitable deployment of modern, affordable access.

Recently, inroads have been made on fixing long-broken California cable franchise law. In the early aughts, cablecos (and telcos pushing into the TV business) successfully lobbied for state-level “cable franchise reform” laws they promised would dramatically lower prices. In reality, such bills were often little more than legislative wishlists crafted by telecom giants.

Often these state-level replacements for local franchise agreements eroded legal regulatory authority, eliminated long standing requirements for uniform broadband and TV deployment, and in some states–like Wisconsin–even acted to strip away local consumer protections and eminent domain rights. Warnings by academics on this front were widely ignored.

Seventeen years after its passage, California activists say that California’s 2006 Digital Infrastructure and Video Competition Act (DIVCA) was no exception.

Our next Building for Digital Equity (B4DE) event is only weeks away. Have you registered yet?

Sponsored by UTOPIA Fiber, the June 7 virtual gathering will feature engaging debates on the hottest topics in broadband: the upcoming release of BEAD funds, the challenges around mapping, updates on efforts to boost enrollment in the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), and the looming implications for both urban and rural communities.

Like B4DE in the past, this event, slated to begin at 3 pm ET on June 7, will be cohosted by Pamela Rosales, from the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), and our own Christopher Mitchell, Director of ILSR's Community Broadband Networks Initiative. 

Register now for the event here.

As with previous B4DE events, this one will include informative, concise presentations, a series of interactive trivia games, and an introduction to new data tools for those working on the front lines of digital equity. It will all be livestreamed and will be available (and later archived) on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn, with live viewer questions answered by the panels.

Building for Digital Equity Podcast Series New Episodes

Meanwhile, be sure to check out our most recent episodes of our Building for Digital Equity podcast, which features short interviews with the people working in the trenches for digital inclusion.

Episode 7 is a discussion with Dwight Thomas, who built the first citywide municipal fiber network in Mont Belvieu, Texas. Thomas goes on talk about the importance of community engagement and how to make sure people can use the network once it is built before explaining his passion for discipleship and sharing knowledge.

Finding good data on broadband is hard to come by. But, it’s about to get a bit easier with a new online resource being developed by an informal group known as Broadband Commons.

Broadband Commons is a group of folks from very different backgrounds – nonprofit, industry, and academic – who work in the broadband and digital equity space and have a shared enthusiasm for making sense of messy broadband data.

Their primary mission is to make broadband data (e.g., FCC Broadband Availability data and more) accessible to all, both in terms of understanding and using the data.

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Broadband Commons (ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative counts itself as a member) is excited to share a peek into the development of their guidebook: Introducing Broadband Data. This book is intended to be the “missing manual” for broadband data users — how to find the data you need, how to wield it to answer your research questions, common gotchas to look out for, and how to share your work back with the community.

They invite interested folks to share any feedback you might have as this guidebook develops – what else might be needed? If you're interested in contributing your expertise by writing a particular section, please head over to the Broadband Commons website to check out the book and sign up for an invite to the discord channel.

Updates about the project will also be posted on the website.

Header image of data graphic courtesy of www.epictop10.com on Flickr, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
 

During the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, organizations that had not previously focused on digital inclusion work scrambled to help their communities stay connected as school, healthcare, and other services transitioned online.

OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates (OCA) was one of these organizations, and in advocating for the digital access needs of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (AANHPIs), found that there was not much data documenting connectivity gaps within these communities. The "model minority" myth, which characterizes AANHPIs as one monolithic group, enjoying “uniform high achievement and high income, [and] relatively untouched by racial and ethnic discrimination,” obscures the digital access gaps in many AANHPI communities and has likely contributed to the dearth of research investigating AANHPI connectivity needs.

OCA Broadband Access and Digital Equity Fellow Yen Jeong told ILSR how difficult it has been to challenge the model minority myth: “Every time we say that our communities need more [digital access] support, everyone says that Asian Americans are digitally already very fluent,” Jeong said, adding that the assumption that many AANHPIs have tech jobs makes it especially difficult for OCA to galvanize support for the AANHPI-focused digital inclusion work.

"It’s been really tough to challenge the narrative."  

The assumption that all AANHPIs are connected to the Internet, along with the lack of evidence to break down this assumption, impeded OCA’s efforts to rally support for AANHPIs’ digital access needs, made urgent by the pandemic. Motivated to get all AANHPIs online, OCA launched a major data collection campaign to challenge the model minority narrative and build the foundation for its newest area of advocacy – technology, workforce, and digital inclusion.  

OCA’s Entry to Digital Inclusion

Two months after President Biden’s belated and long-stalled Federal Communications Commission (FCC) nominee withdrew her nomination after a year-long attack campaign against her, today at the Broadband Communities Summit in Houston, Texas, Gigi Sohn announced her next move: Sohn will serve as the first Executive Director for the American Association of Public Broadband (AAPB).

A non-profit organization formed by a group of municipal officials, AAPB’s mission is to advance advocacy efforts on behalf of publicly-owned, locally-controlled broadband networks. Since the organization first announced its formation at the Broadband Communities Summit in May of 2022, it has been working to educate federal and state policymakers who “have turned to the telecom lobby for help and are receiving biased guidance” on the community broadband networks approach, just as $42.5 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) is set to flow to state governments to expand high-speed Internet access this summer.

During a keynote luncheon at the summit, Sohn was joined by AAPB founding board members Bob Knight and Kimberly McKinley on the main stage for a candid discussion in which she reflected on the state of Internet access in the U.S. and her experience that led to her to withdraw her nomination to the FCC. Near the end of the luncheon she announced her new role with AAPB, which was greeted by a standing ovation from the hundreds of attendees in the audience.

Freedom to Choose Community Broadband Future

The announcement was followed by a press briefing where she elaborated on her vision for AAPB.

“I will be the first Executive Director of the American Association of Public Broadband. Until now, there has not been a membership-based advocacy organization that works to ensure that public broadband can grow unimpeded by anti-competitive barriers. That’s despite the success of public broadband to help places like Chattanooga and the Massachusetts Berkshires transform from sleepy hamlets to vibrant centers of economic opportunity, education and culture,” she said at the press briefing.

In partnership with the Southern Rural Black Women’s Initiative (SRBWI), today ILSR is releasing a new report that examines the link between high-speed Internet infrastructure, access to healthcare, and the economic implications involved.

The report – “Increased Wellness and Economic Return of Universal Broadband Infrastructure: A Telehealth Case Study of Ten Southern Rural Counties” – has particular relevance for those living in rural broadband deserts as it details how universal, affordable, broadband infrastructure would return $43 million per year using telehealth across 10 counties in the Black Belt of Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi.

At a virtual press briefing today, SRBWI leaders and organizers were joined by Dr. Sandra B. Reed of Emory Healthcare; as well as ILSR Senior Researcher and the report’s lead author, Ry Marcattilio, to explain how robust broadband infrastructure could pay for itself in short order and open up untold access to healthcare, educational opportunities, economic development, community engagement, and other benefits along the way.

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“It’s easy to miss the connection, but hard to overlook what’s at stake as rural hospitals close and the cost of transportation to get to far-off healthcare facilities presents a real barrier. This is about access to healthcare and Black women being denied the opportunity to take advantage of telehealth. The broadband infrastructure that’s needed for that just isn’t there,” said Shirley Sherrod, SRBWI State Lead for Georgia and Director of the Southwest Georgia Project in Albany Georgia.

Broadband … to Access Longer, Healthier Lives