Urban libraries say they’re getting shortchanged in a battle for Wi-Fi funding

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As far too many of us have learned as a result of the recession, the public library is often the only place where out-of-work Americans can go to apply for jobs and unemployment benefits online. In many cases, the only way libraries can afford to offer those services is with help from the federal government. Through a public program known as E-Rate, Washington gives institutions a bit of money each year to defray the costs of buying Internet service and equipment.

That initiative got a big boost recently, with the Federal Communications Commission announcing plans to spend $1 billion a year for the next two years on better Wi-Fi, amid a broader push to modernize the E-Rate program. Now the FCC has to decide how to divide up that $2 billion -- and libraries are smack in the center of a brewing fight about it. Library directors from five cities, including Seattle, Memphis and Hartford (CT), have sent letters to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler saying that they stand to be shortchanged if the commission moves forward with a plan to tie the money to the square footage of their facilities.

Under the proposal, the FCC would give libraries a budget for WiFi funding at a rate of $1 per square foot -- which some say isn't nearly enough. "Wi-Fi costs are not merely a function of the square footage of a room with wireless connectivity," wrote Matthew Poland, chief executive of the public library system in Hartford (CT). "Wi-Fi performance is a function of users."

Poland argued that other libraries -- such as those serving wealthy suburbanites -- tend to be bigger. Not only would the proposed formula give more funding to suburban facilities, but those libraries would be taking in money that might be put to better use elsewhere. Inner-city libraries, Poland wrote, serve more users in a tighter space; their patrons tend to be less wealthy and disproportionately unemployed or under-employed. The upshot: It isn't fair for large, rich libraries to get even more money when small, needy libraries might get less.


Urban libraries say they’re getting shortchanged in a battle for Wi-Fi funding