Adam Stone

For state technology leaders, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act marks a unique opportunity to move the needle on broadband availability and accessibility. State CIOs and others in state government tasked with promoting connectivity are looking to the $65 billion earmarked for broadband as a key means to help bring affordable Internet to all Americans. Every state will get $100 million to spend on broadband once the money starts flowing, and while the final formulas haven’t been worked out, many states expect to receive significantly more over time.

More than 42 million Americans lack broadband access, including many in rural communities, according to research group BroadbandNow, which provides independent data on broadband access and policy. Now, states have access to significant federal funding to improve the situation. The American Rescue Plan Act earmarked $350 billion for a variety of services for state and local agencies, including expanded broadband access.

In schools with 1-to-1 device programs, students have access to a wider and deeper range of learning resources. Around the nation, virtual learning needs spurred rapid adoption of 1-to-1 policies across K-12 education. While the final numbers on device adoption aren’t in yet, “There’s clearly been a huge effort to secure more devices,” says Keith Krueger, CEO of the nonprofit Consortium for School Networking.

Sacramento (CA) expects to soon be the first city in the nation with commercially available 5G telecommunications networking. City officials see big promise in the emerging technology. “Smart city stuff, IoT, autonomous vehicles: We will use it for all of those things,” said CIO and IT Director Maria MacGunigal.  Yet MacGunigal isn’t primarily focused on the whiz-bang municipal impact of 5G. “The use cases will change 100 times,” she predicted. “What we do know is that we will need the infrastructure, so we want to build it and build it well.

Hard data enables Louisville (KY) residents to know their broadband speeds and it's also proving beneficial to the city, which is looking to kick off new connectivity projects.

Last spring the city teamed with the IT developers at PowerUp Labs to produce the broadband speed-test site SpeedUpLouisville.com. Since then, nearly 4,000 citizens have logged on to test their Internet speeds, at the same time generating a first-ever view of what the providers are delivering and where the city infrastructure may be lacking. The idea for the test site percolated up at a code-a-thon hosted by the Civic Data Alliance. Results of ongoing speed tests show a number of stark contrasts. Seventeen percent of tests showed broadband speeds limping along at less than 5 Mbps, with geography playing a big role. In the slowest ZIP codes, testers clocked in at an average 7.32 Mbps versus more than 183 Mbps in the fastest neighborhoods.

The government organization charged with building the nation’s first high-speed data network for first responders says it will make its first contract award soon. It will likely happen in November, although no firm date is set. With an award on the $7 billion First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) program potentially just weeks away, first responders say that despite years of planning, they still have more questions than answers when it comes to the future LTE communications backbone. “How will this thing be deployed? What are the subscriber fees going to be? What will be the impact will be on the local budget? How will the network be controlled?” said Yucel Ors, federal advocacy program director for public safety at the National League of Cities. “There are a lot of unknowns still.”

Officially no one even knows who is in the running. FirstNet won’t release the names of bidders, under the rules of the federal procurement process. Unofficially, three groups say they have put their hat in the ring: AT&T, Rivada Mercury and pdvWireless. This alone is noteworthy. When the Federal Communications Commission auctioned public safety spectrum in 2008 it failed to receive a single viable proposal. Many wondered whether the 2016 procurement effort would draw credible attention from potential network builders. It has.

In Montgomery County (MD), public officials are assembling an arsenal of technology fixes to address the “homework gap,” the technology deficit that leaves some kids lacking the network access and devices they need to complete their schoolwork. “The Internet and broadband and cloud communications are integral to our society — our businesses, our neighborhoods, our personal lives," said Mitsuko R. Herrera, director of the ultraMontgomery Program in the county’s Department of Technology Services. "So the schools are developing curricula that are heavily Internet-based.” Citing research that shows some 70 percent of teachers assign homework that requires access to broadband, Herrera said not all students have an equal ability to tackle such assignments. “Some students have a robust Internet connection and a computer, but other students either have no connection at home, or they may be relying on a sibling’s smartphone, or they may do their homework at McDonald’s,” she said. “The county wants to ensure that all children have access to the Internet in order to further their education.”

The county is chasing that goal with a number of different means, forging partnerships with private industry while also leveraging its own existing fiber backbone. The county’s FiberNet infrastructure connects all public schools, libraries and government buildings — over 560 sites in all — making it the front line of broadband delivery for students who can’t access the Internet for schoolwork at home.

How is government enabling broadband? The state of Utah, the city of Austin, Texas, and Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida all offer compelling examples of the ways in which government at various levels is attempting to tackle the problem.

States, cities and school districts also are stepping up with a broad range of initiatives intended to make broadband more universally accessible. That’s appropriate, given the unique assets government can bring to the table. “They are working with the big picture, they can see all the players, and they may have monies they can leverage to support social and economic development through broadband investments,” said Colin Rhinesmith, senior lecturer at Simmons College and author of Digital Inclusion and Meaningful Broadband Adoption Initiatives.

In Austin (TX), population 885,000, some 55,000 residents say they don't use the Internet — at all. But the City Council refuses to accept this. “It is critical that every one of our residents has access to digital and communications technology, and understands technology and its relevancy to their daily lives, whether for helping with their kids’ homework, or looking for jobs, getting access to health information or accessing online government information,” the council writes. And the city’s Office of Digital Inclusion is charged with making that vision a reality by working with a range of private-sector and nonprofit providers to ensure connectivity and encourage Internet use.

Austin’s effort has drawn kudos as a model of how municipalities can help to narrow the broadband gap, recently winning a Digital Inclusion Leadership Award from the National League of Cities. “To have a city office dedicated to this, that is a pretty strong indication of the seriousness that they are giving to it,” said Colin Rhinesmith, author of [The Benton Foundation's] Digital Inclusion and Meaningful Broadband Adoption Initiatives and a senior lecturer at Boston's Simmons College.