Local/Municipal

Cleveland City Council has authorized a $4.35 million performance payment to DigitalC after the nonprofit exceeded its 2025 goals for connecting Cleveland households to high-speed home internet and providing residents with essential digital skills training, marking a major milestone for The Cleveland Model for digital equity. Cleveland's investment in DigitalC is helping demonstrate how a city can move quickly, intentionally and measurably to expand broadband access, digital skills and opportunity.

New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams (D-Brooklyn) called for the city to treat broadband like a public utility, unveiling a proposal that would expand affordable internet access across the five boroughs.

Gigi Sohn joins Nicole Ferraro to discuss a recent effort by the community of Longmeadow (MA) to construct and launch a town-owned fiber network, until the project was defeated with a town vote rejecting a measure to fund construction.

The Mary S. Biesecker Public Library in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, created the Library Internet Checkout Program in partnership with T-Mobile, allowing residents to “checkout” home internet service like they would a book.

Three rural and Tribal New Mexico communities are one step closer to high-speed internet access after the state awarded $300,000 in broadband planning grants to Jemez Springs, Doña Ana County, and Santo Domingo Pueblo. The grants were awarded through the New Mexico Office of Broadband Access and Expansion’s Grant Writing, Engineering, and Planning Program. The grants are specifically used for broadband deployment planning.

The Blueprint for Equitable Digital Participation was designed to center the lived experiences of those directly impacted by digital inequities. Participants provided recommendations that ultimately pass the ‘kitchen table’ test—policies needed to help people live with dignity, opportunity, and the ability to thrive—for how to solve the digital divide in low-to-moderate-income households across America. Key takeaways include: 

May 8 was supposed to be a ribbon cutting. Delta Interfaith—a church-based community organizing group—had spent months planning an event to mark fiber reaching Lake Providence, the main town in East Carroll Parish. Jonathan Chambers, CEO at rural operator Conexon Connect, was due to come with a schedule in hand for building into neighborhoods. Veneeth Iyengar, head of Louisiana’s broadband office would be there too.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program “Benefit of the Bargain” round, sold as “technology neutral” and laser-focused on lowering costs, was neither a benefit nor a bargain for Lake Providence, the poorest parish in Louisiana. A $6 million fiber award became a $150,000 award to satellite Internet provider Starlink. A service that costs $80 a month for the “lite” tier and $120 for standard is a non-starter in a town where nearly half of its residents live below the poverty line.

This Policy Bulletin evaluates claims that Chattanooga’s EPB municipal broadband network generated large employment gains in Hamilton County (TN). First, this Bulletin shows that the source paper invoked to justify the employment narrative explicitly finds no statistically significant employment effects in urban counties; Hamilton County is an urban county. Second, using modern causal inference methods, this Bulletin directly evaluates labor-market outcomes in Hamilton County. Across employment and unemployment outcomes, no economically or statistically significant effects are found.

We cannot champion a future driven by American innovation while simultaneously rejecting the very infrastructure required to power it. As communities across the country debate whether to welcome data centers into their communities, the facts highlight their critical role in powering economic growth and strengthening U.S.