Reggie Rucker and Luke Gannon are joined by guests Shayna Englin and DeAnne Cuellar who discuss how the digital divide is closely tied to housing, healthcare, immigration, and civic education concerns. As the pandemic moved everything online, they explained, we realized that connectivity is an issue that affects the entire human ecosystem. … Read More
ILSR’s Exploring Digital Equity Fact Sheet Series unpacks the issues, challenges, and opportunities of bringing broadband access to everyone. … Read More
The digital divide has only become more pronounced with the pandemic, prompting Baltimore officials to make moves in the direction of something exciting: building a city-owned, open access fiber network.… Read More
The Franklin County Digital Equity Coalition was borne out of the emergency needs presented by the pandemic, but has shaped up to be a good model for how to address the broadband issues facing urban communities across the country. After 11 months of meeting and planning, the coalition released a framework in March outlining its five pillars of focus: broadband affordability, device access, digital life skills and technical support, community response and collaboration, and advocacy for broadband funding and policy. As part of its efforts, the coalition also developed two pilot programs to increase broadband access in parts of the city that need it most.… Read More
When schools in Champaign, Illinois, realized that many kids living in a mobile home park weren’t online after the pandemic hit, a coalition came together to build the students a free fixed wireless network.… Read More
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
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
Millions of students do not have access to adequate connectivity, but Black, Latinx, and Native children are disproportionately impacted by the “homework gap.” One study found that children in one out of every three Black, Latinx, and Native American households did not have broadband access at home.… Read More
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
