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Palm Beach, FL, Releases RFI: Responses Due March 15

The town of Palm Beach, Florida, has decided to clear its skies. Starting this summer, the city is engaging in an undergrounding project to move electric, telephone, and cable Internet infrastructure. City leaders have decided to take advantage of the opportunity and seek out ideas for Internet infrastructure, either publicly owned, or a partnership arrangement. Palm Beach issued a Request for Information (RFI) in February for Broadband and Communications Services; responses are due March 15, 2017.

According to the online information about the RFI:

The undergrounding project will continue in phases until every resident, enterprise and anchor institution is connected by and through underground services. This once in a lifetime event presents a unique opportunity for Service Providers to participate in potentially reducing their cost of providing infrastructure and enable Services to expand in to a new market.

Private providers have already approached the city for permission to install fiber-optic cable in Palm Beach rights-of-way (ROW) and the city hopes the additional revenue will ease the cost of the undergrounding project.

Palm Beach’s year-round population is around 11,000 but the coastal community swells to 30,000 during the tourist season. The community is actually located on a 16-mile long barrier island separated from its neighbor West Palm Beach by the Intracoastal Waterway. The community is affluent, with a median household income of approximately $125,000. 

We’ve written about nearby communities in Palm Beach County, including Lake Worth, Florida, where the community chose to pursue a free public Wi-Fi project as a matter of social justice.

Check out the details on the RFI at the city’s website.     

Palm Beach Post Editorial: Connectivity Is A Social Justice Issue

The small city of Lake Worth, Florida, may undertake a free Wi-Fi project in order to boost economic development and ensure Internet access for all residents. The local newspaper and the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) support the project. They recognize the potential to connect low-income households throughout the city and the economic development opportunities that can benefit the entire community.

A recent editorial in the Palm Beach Post underscores how connectivity is a social justice issue: lack of access excludes folks from society. The editorial also makes the argument for adding fiber optic cable throughout the city, ensuring high-speed Internet access for all.

Social Justice

Many Palm Beach County residents are considered affluent, but Lake Worth has a poverty rate of 32 percent and poorly-ranked public schools. The editorial breaks down the statistics and points to the Pew Research Center’s figures on the digital divide, which acknowledge a class divide and an educational divide. Ninety-six percent of college graduates use the Internet compared to 61 percent of adults with a high school education or less. Likewise, 99 percent of adults with household incomes over $150,000 use the Internet vs. 78 percent of adult of households with less than $30,00.

“Modern society is so deeply networked that to live outside it is a very steep obstacle to ever getting ahead. It is, as [CRA Executive Director Joan Oliva] told the Post Editorial Board, a question of social justice.”

The Proposed Project 

Lake Worth’s CRA wants free public Wi-Fi citywide, especially in the lowest income areas. To blanket the entire 6.5 square mile city in Wi-Fi would cost approximately $860,000. The city government would pay $640,000 with the CRA providing the remaining $220,000.