Video Presentation: Economic Development and Community Broadband

The second Building for Digital Equity (#B4DE) event of the year will focus on what digital equity advocates across the nation are doing to address broadband affordability challenges and delve into the need for creating sustainable solutions for communities.

Photo-filled look at the many days of prep and three days of immersive programming that went into creating Tribal Broadband Bootcamp 11 at RantanenTown Ranch.

Today, the first Building for Digital Equity livestream of the year will kick off at 3 PM ET with a focus on "Life After ACP."

IT-minded Tribal leaders and instructors gather in southern California for the 11th Tribal Broadband Bootcamp as the three-day intensive learning experience continues to offer the ultimate Indian Country networking experience. All of the previous TBB’s offered hands-on training, but this particular bootcamp took it up a notch as TBB instructors set up a full deployment demonstration, illustrating how fiber is buried and/or deployed aerially.

A panel discussion at Net Inclusion 2024 sparked thought-provoking conversation, raising difficult questions for the digital equity movement about whether we are on track to achieve our goals and whether the main strategies used today can result in digital equity or are destined to fall well short.

In January, we released our new census of municipal networks in the United States for 2024, and the significant growth that we've seen over the last two years as more and more cities commit to building Internet infrastructure to add new tools for their local government, incentivize new economic development, and improve connectivity for households. The trend has not gone unnoticed by the monopoly players and their allies, and a new short documentary by Light Reading does a great job of outlining the stakes for local governments, residents stuck on poor connections, and the incumbents as the wave of municipal networks grows.