Three Keys to Advancing Broadband Access & Inclusion in Underserved Urban Communities: An Examination of Long Beach California
The COVID-19 Pandemic has brought renewed attention to the need to ensure that everyone in United States can connect to fast, reliable Internet at home. Legislation seeking to build broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved communities has been introduced in Congress and bills to enhance broadband access and adoption are pending in no less than 43 state capitols across the country.
Given the energy and attention around the best ways to achieve universal broadband access and improve digital equity, the time seems right to revisit — and update (thanks to a very interesting conversation with Cason Lee, Deputy Director of Technology and Innovation for the City of Long Beach, CA) — three key takeaways drawn from my experience working on the Federal government’s last large-scale broadband infrastructure and digital inclusion program.
Three Key Takeaways from the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP)
More than 10-years ago, I joined a team within the U.S. Department of Commerce that was tasked with designing and administering a $4.7B program to expand broadband access and adoption across the United States. By 2013, the effort, named the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program or “BTOP,” had funded more than 110,000 new & upgraded broadband network miles, connected more than 20,000 community anchor institutions (e.g., schools, libraries, health facilities), installed 50,000 computer workstations in public computing centers and partnered with dozens of community-based organizations to provide 10 million hours of training that resulted in more than 600,000 new broadband subscribers.
From my experience working on BTOP, I draw three key takeaways:
1. Addressing broadband access and adoption issues is hard work. Even with billions of dollars, there are no silver bullet solutions that are successful in every circumstance in every community.
2. Partnerships are critical. Neither the private sector nor the government/non-profit sectors will be able to achieve universal access to broadband or significant improvements in digital inclusion without effective public-private partnerships.
3. Success will come through identifying and leveraging force multipliers. Greatest progress will be made when efforts to expand broadband access and inclusion are designed to ‘catch the wind’ rather than ‘swim against the tide.’
Three Key Takeaways — Updated — to Reflect Successful Efforts in the City of Long Beach, CA
The City of Long Beach, California has been named a Top Ten Digital City for 9-years running and has a commitment to digital equity and inclusion that emanates from the City’s Mayor, Robert Garcia. Starting in 2015, the City of Long Beach kicked-off a series of innovative initiatives aimed at addressing connectivity and inclusion issues in its community. Over the last 5-years, Long Beach has developed a Master Plan for its fiber backbone, approved an ordinance streamlining permitting for wireless broadband deployments, executed innovative pilot projects that enlarged the cities fiber network and expanded wireless broadband coverage across the city and completed a comprehensive Digital Inclusion Study.
I spoke with Cason Lee, the City of Long Beach’s Deputy Director of Technology and Innovation, about Long Beach’s accomplishments and experience. Copied below are three updated keys to advancing broadband access and inclusion in underserved urban communities based on the example of Long Beach.
1. Effective planning related to broadband deployment and digital inclusion efforts takes time but has long-lasting benefits. Long Beach’s efforts to address connectivity issues and digital inclusion have included extensive planning and stakeholder engagement. According to Mr. Lee, the City has seen the clear benefits of investing time, energy and money in the planning and outreach. He notes that the planning process has helped ensure leaders across different municipal department support the city’s new approaches and initiatives. The planning process has also provided an important opportunity solicit input from residents, from industry and from subject matter experts (e.g. the National Digital Inclusion Alliance). Long Beach has pursued a transparent planning process and the result is a well-vetted, solidified approach that provides both clear guidance for municipal leaders responsible for executing the plans and certainty and predictability for Long Beach’s private sector partners.
2. Partnerships are a critical component of success. Long Beach is working with dozens of partners to realize its connectivity and inclusion goals. Long Beach’s pilot projects with Crown Castle, a communications infrastructure company, is a particularly illustrative example of the power of effective partnerships. The pilot deployments with Crown helped the city develop, test and refine its small cell specifications which are in-turn a key component of Long Beach’s streamlined approval process for the deployment of aerial fiber and wireless broadband nodes. The City of Long Beach intends to be a 5G-ready city. The combination of a successful pilot and a streamlined deployment process has meant that a project that started with the deployment of 19 wireless nodes along Shoreline Drive has expanded into a deployment of hundreds of nodes throughout the City of Long Beach and more than 70,000 liner feet of new fiber infrastructure deployed in the community.
3. Force multipliers accelerate progress towards connectivity and inclusion goals. The City of Long Beach’s efforts have been enhanced by leveraging at least two force multipliers. The first force multiplier is the City’s investment in shared infrastructure and collocation. Under the City’s partnership with Crown Castle, Crown agreed to make the small cell nodes and Crown’s fiber-fed network in Long Beach available to any cellular provider. The result is that wireless providers can provide service to Long Beach residents using existing facilities and do not need to deploy duplicative infrastructure. The second force multiplier was to leverage the energy and enthusiasm among wireless providers for 5G deployment. Because wireless providers desire access to municipally-controlled Right-of-way, street poles and other city infrastructure to deploy small cell nodes for 5G deployment, Long Beach was able to swap access to city-controlled infrastructure for access to new fiber routes that nearly doubled the city’s fiber network. Through an additional partnership with Verizon, the city gained eight miles of city-owned fiber conduit, 50-hotspots and a $100,000 donation to a local community organization to buy Chromebooks to be distributed in underserved neighborhoods.
As federal, state and local policymakers consider how best to advance broadband access and inclusion in underserved urban communities, they should give a careful examination to the example of Long Beach, California.
About the Connected Communities LLC: Connected Communities provides consulting services to local governments, non-profit organizations and technology companies. On this Medium site, we explore a range of topics related to a key question: how to best bring scale to Smart Community projects so that the initiatives can realize positive, transformative impact for community residents.
