Community Anchor Institutions

Educational excellence. A 21st century economy. Protecting communities. Fiscal responsibility. Happy and healthy citizens.

The US Department of the Treasury announced the approval of high-speed internet projects in three additional states under the American Rescue Plan Act's (ARPA) Capital Projects Fund (CPF): Arizona, Tennessee, and Wyoming. Together, these states will use their funding to connect nearly 190,000 homes and businesses to affordable, high-speed internet.

The Illinois Office of Broadband and the University of Illinois System announced the launch of the Connect Illinois Broadband and Digital Equity Planning Initiative. This year-long local coordination, engagement, and planning project will enable the state to receive the historic federal Digital Equity (DE) and Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program funds in 2024 and 2025, respectively. The initiative will leverage growing capacity within the Illinois Broadband Lab, which leverages $12.5 million in state and federal funding to support and sustain current programming

The Federal Communications Commission adopted a proposal seeking comment on steps to encourage greater participation by eligible Tribal applicants in the E-Rate program, which provides high-speed internet to schools and libraries.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is investing $63 million to bring high-speed internet access to people living and working in rural areas in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and Mississippi. The investments include funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The $63 million in grants comes from the third funding round of the ReConnect Program, in which USDA invested a total of $1.7 billion. The four projects being funded are:

The Federal Communications Commission committed over $24 million in a new funding round through the Emergency Connectivity Program, which provides digital services for students in communities across the country.

The US Department of Commerce's Economic Development Administration awarded $301,030 to the Colorado State University (CSU) System for a planning grant to promote and enhance economic development in rural Colorado.

The Federal Communications Commission recently released a “pre-production” draft of its new National Broadband Map in an effort to provide more precise details about where internet service does and does not exist in individual locations across the US. While much attention has been paid to how the map represents broadband service for individual households, there is much less understanding among the general public with regards to how the map represents individual community anchor institutions, such as public schools, libraries, and hospitals.

As of February 2023, all states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have received their digital equity planning grants from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). At the Office of Educational Technology (OET), our priority is to support states as they include the voices, needs, and assets of the education community in their digital equity plans. Therefore, in 2022, OET launched the Digital Equity Education Roundtables Initiative and published Advancing Digital Equity for All, which identifies barriers faced by learners in adopting reliable, high-speed

The Idaho Broadband Advisory Board (IBAB) has awarded $26.3 million in funding from the Idaho Broadband Fund for two middle-mile broadband infrastructure projects in Idaho. After opening the request for proposals on December 22, 2022, the board moved efficiently to award eligible broadband projects, prioritizing projects focusing on expanding or extending middle-mile. The board awarded $20 million to the Idaho Regional Optical Network (IRON) and the Intermountain Infrastructure Group (IIG) for a 198-mile public/private partnership project from Grangeville to Star.