institute for local self-reliance

Content tagged with "institute for local self-reliance"

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Speakers And Agenda Announced for #B4DE Livestream ‘Life After ACP’

Bringing together a nationwide cross-section of leading digital inclusion practitioners, the first Building For Digital Equity (#B4DE) livestream of the year is set to zoom in on the imminent end of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).

Co-hosted by the ILSR's Community Broadband Networks Initiative and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), the popular (and free) virtual gathering will focus on “Life After ACP” – as the FCC continues to wind down the program with the $14.2 billion fund on track to run out of money by the end of April.

Set for March 20, 2024 from 3 to 4:15 PM ET, the lineup of speakers will share on-the-ground perspectives and approaches being adopted at the community level as they work to keep financially-strapped households connected beyond ACP.

While virtual seats for #B4DE fills up fast, registration is still open here.

Here’s the run-of-show:

NDIA’s Amy Huffman will set the table on where things stand with the ACP wind down process before two lightning rounds take center screen.

Life After ACP Will Be Focus of Next Building for Digital Equity Livestream

As the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) nears its end, our first Building For Digital Equity livestream of 2024 will focus on what digital inclusion practitioners across the nation are doing to ensure that as many ACP recipients as possible do not lose access to high-speed Internet.

The free virtual gathering – #B4DE Life After ACP – will be held on March 20, 2024 from 3 to 4:15 PM ET.

Attendees are encouraged to register now here.  

As the FCC is in the midst of winding down the ACP, which will run out of funds by April, it’s anybody’s guess just how many of the nearly 23 million Americans enrolled in the program will be forced to discontinue their Internet service because they can no longer afford it. But, if the 1,300 digital equity advocates who descended on Net Inclusion 2024 in Philadelphia two weeks ago is any indication, one thing is certain: the national effort to tackle the broadband affordability crisis will continue – even in the absence of ACP.

Sponsored once again by UTOPIA Fiber and co-hosted by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) and ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative, the line-up of frontline digital inclusion practitioners will share their outlook and strategies and help provide attendees with a road map in dealing with the imminent demise of the program.

The livestream will be available (and later archived) on Facebook, YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), and LinkedIn, with live viewer questions answered by the invited speakers and presenters. We recommend viewing it on YouTube where the live chat will be most engaging. Other questions can be submitted using the #B4DE hashtag on X.

Save The Date: #B4DE Life After ACP

With the nation's premier digital inclusion conference in full swing right now in Philadelphia – and with yet another banner year in broadband in the making – the first Building For Digital Equity (B4DE) livestream event of the year is now set for March 20.

As you read this, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), organizers of Net Inclusion 2024, are engaging with hundreds of digital inclusion practitioners, advocates, academics, Internet service providers, and policymakers from across the nation at the conference. Joining them there in the City of Brotherly Love is a full complement of the Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR) Community Broadband Networks team. The energy and ideas from the event will inform the upcoming B4DE that will feature the theme: Life After ACP.

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B4DE March 2024 save the date flyer

We encourage you to save the date and register here for the popular (and free) virtual gathering to be held March 20, 2024 from 3 to 4:15 PM ET.

Coming on the heels of our last B4DE event in December, digital inclusion advocates are strategizing around how to tackle the broadband affordability challenge as the FCC winds down the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).

Building for Digital Equity End of Year Encore

Capping off a banner year in broadband, ILSR and NDIA’s final Building for Digital Equity livestream of 2023 this week had its largest audience to date since the online quarterly series started in 2022.

Digital Equity Unwrapped: End of Year Reflections/The New Year Ahead, sponsored by UTOPIA Fiber, featured timely topics and practical insights from an array of frontline digital inclusion practitioners, teeing up Net Inclusion 2024 – the biggest in-person gathering of digital equity advocates in the nation.

That event will be hosted by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) in Philadelphia, February 13-15, 2024.

If you missed the #B4DE 2023 finale or would like to see it again, you can watch it in its entirety below.

It includes lightning round presentations from the Administrator for Chicanos Por La Causa (CPLC) Nubia Estrada and OCA Asian Pacific American Advocates Policy & Organizing Manager Eric Kim; a preview of this year’s Trailblazer Awards with a special guest appearance by Rebecca Kauma, LA County’s Director of Digital Equity; and an update on the work being done by Shaping Our Appalachian Region (SOAR) Digital Navigator Ashley Smith.

Putting a bow on the holiday season event was keynote speaker Patrick Messac, Director of the Bay Area-based digital equity nonprofit #OaklandUndivided. Messac connected the dots on the importance of equitable infrastructure investments, mapping, and ways local communities might leverage the FCC’s new rules to address digital discrimination.

Countdown To Last Building for Digital Equity Event Of The Year

Digital Equity Unwrapped: End of Year Reflections/The New Year Ahead is just a week away, as seats are filling up fast for next Tuesday’s Building for Digital Equity (#B4DE) event.

The popular (and free) virtual gathering – slated for December 12, 2023 from 3 to 4:15 pm ET – will highlight important milestones in broadband over the past year and take a look ahead for what promises to be another busy year for digital inclusion practitioners across the country.

There’s still time to register for the event here.

Co-hosted by the Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR) Community Broadband Networks Initiative and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), the final #B4DE of the year will serve up practical insights on everything from Digital Equity Act planning to how communities are confronting digital discrimination.

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B4DE December 2023 flyer screenshot

The event will be sparked by lightning round presentations featuring Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) Administrator for Chicanos Por La Causa (CPLC) Nubia Estrada and OCA Asian Pacific American Advocates Policy & Organizing Manager Eric Kim. Each will give a concise overview of their outreach work with “covered populations.”

AARP and ILSR Continue to Support “Covered Populations” With Broadband for Beginners Workshops

As state and local broadband leaders engage “covered populations,” as defined under the Digital Equity Act, AARP and ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks Initiative has been working in partnership over the past two years to deliver “Broadband for Beginners” workshops in states across the country that target individuals 60 years of age or older – and those who work with them.

Next month, on Dec 7 from 8:30 AM to 5 pm ET, AARP Maine and the ILSR team will wrap up the year with an in-person workshop in Bangor, Maine. The all-day event is designed to demystify broadband technology and help empower older adults to join the effort to expand digital equity, most especially those who have been reluctant or fearful to explore the opportunities broadband access offers.

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older adult hands on computer

There is still time to register here.

The agenda will serve up a veritable buffet of broadband topics and leave participants stuffed with confidence in how to advocate for their needs in an increasingly digital society.

“We are thrilled to be working with AARP in Maine,” said ILSR Community Broadband Networks Director Christopher Mitchell. “The state of Maine is making great strides on Internet access and we look forward to supporting that work with many of the people responsible for it.”

Inline image of older adult typing on laptop courtesy of StockVault, CC0 1.0 Universal
 

Save the Date: Building for Digital Equity #B4DE Holiday Edition

With the holiday season upon us, the Institute for Local Self Reliance (ILSR) Community Broadband Networks Initiative and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) are gearing up for the final Building for Digital Equity (#B4DE) event of the year and encouraging digital equity practitioners to save the date.

The popular (and free) virtual gathering will be held December 12, 2023 from 3 to 4:15 pm ET and will feature a holiday-inspired theme: Digital Equity Unwrapped: End of Year Reflections/The New Year Ahead.

You can register for the event now here.

Coming on the heels of our last B4DE event in October, which is still reverberating through digital inclusion circles across the nation, we are excited to follow up with a jolly and informative agenda that will cover:

  • The latest on the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP).
  • Lightning Rounds on digital inclusion work with covered populations.
  • Setting the table on forthcoming Digital Equity Act funding and how communities are preparing.
  • Unpacking digital discrimination and its practical implications.

The keynote speaker for the event will be Patrick Messac, Director of #OaklandUndivided, an equity-based, collective impact initiative launched in Oakland, California.

Tribal Broadband Bootcamp Comes to Saint Regis Mohawk Reservation in Northern New York

As a young woman of the Nuxalk Nation, Mallory Hans is “clearing a path for future generations.”

A 2022 graduate of the British Columbia Institute of Technology, she’s one of about 50 people hailing from various Tribes and First Nations across North America in attendance for the latest Tribal Broadband Bootcamp, a three-day intensive learning experience focused on building and running Tribal Internet networks.

Held in different tribal regions several times a year since the initiative began in 2021, this bootcamp (the eighth in an ongoing series of hands-on seminars) is being hosted at the Akwesasne Mohawk Casino Resort on the Saint Regis Mohawk reservation along the New York/Canada border.

“So far so good,” Mallory said on Day Two of the bootcamp just as the attendees broke into small groups to go through a variety of demonstration stations set up by bootcamp instructors and Tribal employees who run Mohawk Networks, which provides fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) Internet, video, and voice services across the reservation in northern New York.

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Mohawk Networks Truck

In continuing the driving impulse to demystify technologies and build capacity among cohorts in Tribal nations, Day Two was centered around fiber stations that included demonstrations of how network operation centers are run; one on fiber splicing; another showcasing equipment used to install fiber inside of households with representatives from Calix, and another station on the electronic equipment that measures the performance of fiber lines.

“I’m enjoying it, feeling more confident and finding out I’m capable,” said the 22 year-old, newly minted fiber technician.

CBN Welcomes New ACLS Fellow to Work on Advancing Digital Sovereignty in Indian Country

The Community Broadband Networks (CBN) team here at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) is thrilled to announce we will once again welcome a postdoctoral fellow this coming fall to undertake a two-year project that advances policy initiatives in support of expanding broadband access and digital sovereignty for Tribal Nations across the U.S.

It’s the second time the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has selected ILSR as a host organization for a Leading Edge Fellowship, which embeds humanities and social science PhDs with nonprofits committed “to solve problems, build capacity, and advance justice and equity in society.”

Earlier this month, ACLS announced 18 new ACLS Leading Edge Fellows for 2023. In September, one of those fellows – Jessica E. Auer (PhD, History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) – will join the CBN team, kicking off her full-time fellowship as a Tribal Broadband Policy Analyst.

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ACLS Fellow Jessica Auer

Jessica will conduct original research and writing to help develop policy narratives that can be used to support new and existing tribal broadband efforts.

With less than 60 percent of those living on Tribal lands in the lower 48 states having access to basic broadband connections – as Native Nations have regularly been excluded from policy conversations around these issues – Tribal citizens miss out on educational, economic, telehealth, social networking, and a panoply of other activities that foster community resiliency and democratic engagement in the modern world.

Welcome to the New CommunityNets.org

Fourteen years ago, the original MuniNetworks.org went live. With support from the Ford Foundation, it came into being to tell the stories of all of the communities around the country that were taking back their telecommunications future from the monopoly providers. I hoped it would be two things: a clearinghouse of news and local-government success stories, and a lasting, living archive of the movement to return the ideology of self-reliance to Internet infrastructure. At the time, there were a few dozen municipal networks operating around the country. 

Since then, we've written almost 4,000 stories, recorded more than 500 episodes of the Community Broadband Bits podcast, and released dozens of reports, case studies, and fact sheets about local governments taking action. We've produced informational shorts and documentaries, explainer videos, and more. CommunityNets.org gets visited by thousands of people every day, and records more than a quarter of a million page views each month.

To me, this is a reflection of the strong and growing movement to take back control from the cable and telephone monopolies who charge too much and invest too little in our cities, our suburbs, and our rural areas. Today, hundreds and hundreds of communities are served by publicly and locally owned and operated networks, covering millions of people. More than a third of all electric cooperatives have recognized the need for rural Internet access or responded to demands by their membership, and are adding broadband to their portfolios. Most telephone cooperatives are doing the same. In fact, the cooperative model is so successful that rural North and South Dakota - with some of the least densely populated parts of the country - are better served by fiber optic infrastructure than many major cities. Cooperatives across the Dakotas cover more ground than the entirety of AT&T's fiber service today.