'This Is 21st Century Infrastructure'

Around the time Trey Mendez, mayor of Brownsville, Texas, took office about two years ago, the city appeared atop a list of places with the worst internet connectivity in America, a distinction he says he found troubling. Mendez also points out that Brownsville, in recent years, has ranked among the nation’s poorest cities.

The mayor counts making headway to solve these problems–poverty and subpar internet service–among the main goals for his term. He also describes the two issues as linked. “Digital access and eliminating the digital divide really kind of go hand in hand with crossing our name off the list of poorest communities,” he said during Route Fifty’s Future Cities event this week.

To that end, Mendez and the city commission this month approved spending $19.5 million of federal pandemic recovery aid from the American Rescue Plan Act on broadband development.

The city’s plan, which calls for installing 95 miles of underground fiber to help expand service, emerged from an effort that began in 2019, before the Covid-19 outbreak hit and involved a group of local institutions, including Brownsville’s public utilities board.

"This is really a huge initiative for us. It's one of my top priorities,” Mendez said.

The Future Cities panel, which focused on equity issues related to broadband, also included city officials from San Jose, California, Norfolk, Virginia and Baltimore. 

In many ways, the discussion underscored how it is a pivotal moment for expanding high-speed internet access across the U.S. As the pandemic forced people to work from home, and children to attend school online, it put a harsh spotlight on service and affordability gaps.

On the upside, there’s billions in new federal funding available for broadband initiatives under ARPA, and the bipartisan infrastructure framework that U.S. Senate lawmakers voted to move ahead with on Wednesday includes $65 billion for high-speed internet investments. 

Cities and states, meanwhile, are pursuing innovative initiatives to get people connected, and the increased national reckoning over racial injustice has put equity issues at the forefront as governments look at ways to expand and upgrade service.

“This is not just a Baltimore problem,” said Zeke Cohen, a council member in the city. “This is an American problem.”

“This is 21st century infrastructure,” he added. “Just like the rural electrification of the 30s and 40s, I think we need that same sense of urgency right now. We need to see broadband as a public utility and not just a private luxury that well-to-do people are able to get."

Cohen cited one estimate indicating that 40% of Baltimore families lacked home wireline internet service as of 2018. “There is something profoundly wrong with that,” he said.

Norfolk council member Andria McClellan noted how the cost of service, not just whether it is available, can be a major factor in whether people can get online. “In Norfolk we have connectivity, but 25% of our residents don't have access to high-speed internet because it's not affordable,” she said. “The affordability piece is so critical.”

As governments seek to get more people connected and ensure that historically disadvantaged groups aren’t left behind, McClellan emphasized that they’ll have to look not just at infrastructure and affordability issues, but also making sure people have devices they can use to get online and that that they have the skills and digital literacy needed to navigate the internet.

“It can't just be about having wire in the ground, or fiber in the ground,” she said.

McClellan explained that in many cases in her part of Virginia, there’s only one internet service provider, which limits competition–generally not a good thing for consumer prices. 

Norfolk and other cities are involved in a regional initiative to build out a “middle mile” broadband network, and McClellan said one hope is that this will help incentivize and lower barriers to entry for more internet service providers to move in. 

Developing the fiber network, she said, should also better set up the city and the region to embrace 5G networks. This is seen as the next generation of internet service and a lynchpin in allowing for the wider adoption of so-called “smart cities” technologies–like vehicles that communicate with road infrastructure and sensors that help to monitor water systems.

McClellan also emphasized that, for rural communities, emerging satellite internet technologies like Starlink, part of Elon Musk's SpaceX, might hold more promise than wired broadband, which can be difficult and cost prohibitive to install in outlying areas.

Even San Jose–a city with about one million people, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, the epicenter of America’s tech industry–has broadband gaps. 

“We're home to some of the wealthiest ZIP codes in the country, yet over 10% of our population is either unconnected at home or under-connected,” said Dolan Beckel, the city’s director of civic innovation and digital strategy.

San Jose in recent years has partnered with telecommunications companies to get “small cell” equipment installed on city property, like street lights and rooftops. This infrastructure helps to speed up data moving over cellular networks, and can also support the rollout of 5G.

Fee revenue the city gets from this arrangement goes toward a special fund that pays for a set of programs that are aimed at helping people who lack internet access get connected.

The city has also drastically sped up its permitting process during the course of this work, Beckel said. He said that by the time Covid-19 hit, it was possible for telecoms to get small cell equipment installed in the city in as little as 24 hours. During the pandemic, he added, the city worked with the companies to beef up service in underserved areas.

“We're well on our way to closing the digital divide,” Beckel said, “knowing that we have a lot more work to do ahead of us.”