Nearly $2 billion in broadband funding is at stake in the next 30 days, but advocacy groups say the challenge process is designed to fail. Starting ne

How a ‘once in a century’ broadband investment plan could go wrong

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2024-07-07 13:30:11

Nearly $2 billion in broadband funding is at stake in the next 30 days, but advocacy groups say the challenge process is designed to fail.

Starting next week, California residents have 30 days to challenge maps that will determine how $1.8 billion is distributed to increase internet access in the state.

Actually getting the California Public Utilities Commission to accept changes to the federal maps is quite difficult, which internet access advocates with educational backgrounds are raising alarm over.

For example, after the COVID-19 pandemic hit and teachers at the Fresno Unified School District started teaching classes remotely, Philip Neufeld started work to ensure 70,000 students could log on.

Neufeld, a district IT worker and member of the Fresno Coalition for Digital Inclusion, started noticing patterns. He heard about students going to Taco Bell and McDonald’s for WiFi to do their homework, but he saw comparatively low download speeds across entire neighborhoods, disparities that reminded him of redlining, the practice of denying people housing and wealth based on their race. Neufeld and a colleague built an open source tool to gather 14 million speed tests across Fresno over the span of two years.

“What it shows is that it’s not just people in rural areas who have a real need for better internet,” he said. “It’s people in urban, low-income neighborhoods in apartment buildings and mobile home parks, and these patterns are showing up across multiple large cities that have higher poverty.”