How Oklahoma is meeting digital needs with Community Access Portals

Oklahoma is now 95 percent of the way toward reaching statewide connectivity, with Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment builds still ahead. But deploying last-mile broadband networks is just one aspect of closing the digital divide. Ensuring people can access and use essential digital services is another. To that end, the state of Oklahoma recently embarked on an initiative to roll out Community Access Portals—digitally equipped pods with broadband access—in public libraries statewide. The state is working in collaboration with Ready.net, which is supplying and supporting the portals, and is in the process of rolling out 175 such portals across the state, kicking off with a launch at Kingfisher Memorial Library.