Digital equity is a key promise of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. If successful, the new law will lead to everyone and every community around the country having the connections and skills they need to fully participate in our increasingly digital economy and society. It seems like a tall order. To reach such a lofty goal, the infrastructure law and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) require thoughtful broadband deployment and digital equity planning from the states, territories and tribes that will receive federal funding through the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) and digital equity programs (referred to as eligible entities). Fortunately for those implementing these requirements, the field of community development has a well-documented, adaptable and sustainable approach to identifying, engaging and activating community assets. The approach, often called Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), combines practices that marginalized and oppressed communities have used for generations across the globe to gather and implement resources for achieving community goals in spite of contexts of caste, segregation, apartheid, economic inequity, colonization, and other marginalizing systems.

[Ron Dwyer-Voss is the founder and lead consultant for Pacific Community Solutions, Inc. PCS support leaders, organizations and agencies shift power to create positive social change through community organizing, asset-based community development, evaluation and learning, and organizational strengthening.]

A legal decision in New York State found that the Village of Flower Hill reserved the right to deny ExteNet, an agent of Verizon Wireless, from placing small cell sites within the Village. The decision raises interesting legal and other issues about telecommunications infrastructure. ExteNet was hired by Verizon Wireless to place 66 small cells site in and around the Village, including 18 within the Village, for the stated purpose of strengthening the existing 4GLTE network. Ultimately, the denial was on the grounds that the Village didn’t see any evidence of current gaps in 4GLTE cellular coverage. The case boiled down to language included in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 – language that has been described in some cases as ambiguous. ExteNet cited the provisions of the Act that says that no state or local government shall prohibit the ability of an entity to provide any interstate or intrastate telecommunications service. The Village countered with language also from the Act that says that the Federal Communications Commission cannot preempt the rights of state or local governments to manage the public rights-of-way in a competitively neutral and nondiscriminatory manner. The Court ultimately decided in favor of the Village using additional language from the Act that says that any denial for the placement of telecommunications infrastructure must be supported by substantial evidence. This case says that the community can deny placement if there is evidence to support the denial. The evidence could be something as simple as not wanting construction that disturbs the paved streets.

A last-minute challenge has stalled broadband installation in a poor northeastern Louisiana community that Gov. John Bel Edwards (D-LA) used as a backdrop for the July 25 launch of 67 grants to extend high-speed Internet to underserved rural communities. The effort to quash the successful bid for East Carroll Parish claims that about two-thirds of the homes set to get internet access are already being served. It’s just one of 26 complaints statewide that threaten to delay the delivery of high-speed Internet to about 400,000 people in rural Louisiana. Work in the East Carroll community, which was due to start, has been halted. “We expected some challenges. We didn’t expect as many as we got,” said State Rep. Daryl Deshotel (R-Marksville) who sponsored the bill establishing Louisiana's broadband program. Some of the challenges Rep Deshotel has seen involve existing providers who claim to already be providing rural households with fast enough internet speeds to meet the criteria. After a challenge was filed against the winning bidder in the municipality of Avoyelles, Rep Deshotel urged businesses and homes to test the speeds they were getting from the company, which opposed the winning bid. Only 7% reported speeds close to what the challenging company said it had already deployed the sites that would be maintained under the grant, Rep Deshotel said. “Exaggeration is a good word,” he said.