New Study Shows State Barriers to Community Networks Decrease Broadband Availability
A new study shows that states which enact barriers to entry for municipal and cooperative broadband networks reduce broadband availability.… Read More
Pilot Project Brings Telehealth to Barbershops and Salons for Hypertension Screening
A new pilot project is bringing telehealth services to barbershops and salons. The aim is to leverage all of the unique characteristics of these businesses to pioneer early detection and eventually ongoing treatment of high blood pressure and the constellation of associated complications, which disproportionately affect African Americans.… Read More
San Antonio Using City Infrastructure to Connect 20,000 Students in Need
A new initiative in San Antonio, Texas, called Connected Beyond the Classroom, which will begin launching over the next weeks, will leverage city-owned fiber infrastructure and $27 million in CARES Act funds to connect 20,000 students across the city’s 50 most-vulnerable neighborhoods in a bid to close the digital divide and ensure teachers, students, and their parents can continue to learn this fall and beyond.… Read More
“We Can’t Build It and Just Assume People Will Come”: Digital Inclusion and Equity Today
Today on the podcast we welcome Angela Siefer and Craig Settles. Together, they untangle the long history of broadband subsidies and racial bias, and how that has come to influence who has affordable connection options today. They also talk about the current stage of telehealth and the ramifications of the Digital Equity Act since its adoption a year ago.… Read More
Community Owned Broadband Helps Utah Watch for Wildfires
UTOPIA Fiber, the publicly owned, open access network, has begun a pilot wildfire-detection projected which has the potential to provide safer, faster, less expensive service to communities in Utah, saving the state tens of millions of dollars a year.… Read More
Chattanooga Uses Municipal Network to Give Students Free Internet Connections
Yesterday in an announcement via livestream, the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, Hamilton County Schools, and the fiber arm of municipal utility Electric Power Board (EPB) announced a partnership to provide free Internet access and hardware to the 17,700 homes with school children on free or reduced lunch programs in the county.… Read More
Going HAM: How Rural Pennsylvanians Went Wireless
Tucked away in Kishacoquillas Valley (also known as Big Valley) between Stone and Jacks Mountains lies a 120-foot repurposed HAM radio tower, now the base of operations for the Rural Broadband Cooperative (RBC), a group bringing fixed wireless to a rural Pennsylvania community.… Read More
The DIGITAL Reservations Act: A Practical Answer to Tribal Connectivity Today
Yesterday, Congresswoman Deb Haaland and Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced the DIGITAL Reservations Act, a bill which ends the current Federal Communications Commission (FCC) practice of selling wireless spectrum rights on the lands of Indian Tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations and grants ownership, management, and governance of all spectrum to those groups in perpetuity.… Read More
Mainers Commit to Rural Internet Expansion with $15 Million Bond Issue
Maine’s High-Speed Internet Infrastructure Bond Issue has passed. 76% of voters authorized the issuance of $15 million in general obligation bonds to expand broadband access for residents in underserved and unserved areas.… Read More