Internet Access Plan Embraces The Market

New Haven is still trying to bridge the digital divide, and has turned to the private market to do the heavy lifting.

That’s the upshot of the latest announcement in a yearslong quest that began with the Harp administration: to get low-income New Haveners onto the fast lane of the internet highway.

Mayor Justin Elicker, city Economic Development Officer Dean Mack, and a host of other city and state officials and local nonprofit representatives made that most recent internet-focused announcement Tuesday afternoon during a press conference held in the basement meeting space of the Wilson branch public library at 303 Washington Ave.

The cause for the meetup was a $250,000 grant that the city recently received from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). That grant will will be used to get the word out about the FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which provides a $30 monthly subsidy for eligible low-income households’ internet bills. It also provides up to $100 for a one-time purchase of a laptop, desktop, computer, or tablet. 

According to the mayor, only around 9,000 of the roughly 25,000 ACP-eligible families in New Haven have signed up for this underused federal internet subsidy.

As Elicker and Mack explained on Tuesday, the city plans to use this federal grant money to contract with the local nonprofit CfAL for Digital Inclusion, which will hire four staff members to do outreach and run sign-up programs for the existing ACP internet subsidy through June 2025. 

Some of this federal grant money will also go to the New Haven Free Public Library (NHFPL) to help them market ACP, and still more will be set aside to get the word out about the federal internet subsidy at local public housing complexes.

All with the goal of improving internet affordability and helping close the ​“digital divide,” Elicker said, given just how essential the internet has become for everything from education to healthcare to work to staying in touch with family and friends.

“The money won’t be paying for improved internet access,” Mack said. ​“It’s just to help connect people to existing services.”

This program also won’t do anything to put a dent in the local business of telecom giants Comcast or Frontier — as it’s designed to subsidize internet access among existing providers, not build out anything new. 

Mack did say on Tuesday that the city is in the middle of a request for proposals [RFP] process to try to lure more internet providers to the city in order to increase access and reduce costs. In addition to Comcast and Frontier, the smaller-scale fiber provider GoNetSpeed currently covers roughly a quarter of the city.

Asked during Tuesday’s presser if the city has given up on any plans — explored during both the Harp and Elicker administrations — to build out a publicly owned municipal broadband network, Mack and Elicker repeated what they told the Independent on this topic back in September 2022.

“We’re moving away from the municipal option,” Mack said. ​“We are right now focusing on more of a market-driven option. We found when we went to the market and started talking to companies, there were companies interested in bringing new internet options to the city.”

“Initially, we were thinking that the city had to play a much more significant role” in providing internet to New Haveners, Elicker said. ​“Frankly, the city isn’t in the business of providing broadband. The ideal is that someone who has expertise in this area does it naturally as a part of the market, and the ideal is that it is also affordable.”

Elicker said his administration has seen ​“our providers start to expand access in the city.” One of the biggest challenges, he said, is bringing broadband directly into individual apartments in larger ​“multi-dwelling-unit” buildings.

The focus of of the RFP that the city put out for new internet providers, he said, ​“is on these multi-dwelling units and how we can work with the provider” and ​“incentivize” them to bring high-speed affordable internet not just to apartment buildings, but directly into the apartment units themselves.

Both during and after Tuesday’s presser, state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) Director of Broadband Kevin Pisacich said DEEP is currently administering two broadband programs.

One, an American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Capital Projects Fund program, will provide $43 million to ​“build out broadband to low-income communities, multi-dwelling units, and underserved areas.”

Another, the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, will provide around $144 million ​“to build up broadband connections for those who don’t have it.”

These state-managed funds will be made available to boost internet access ​“not just for incumbent providers,” he said. They could could be used to develop municipal broadband networks, if towns and cities so choose.

Nearby, Comcast Government & Regulatory Affairs Manager Amy Horan and External Affairs Director Brad Palazzo had a table filled with flyers about the telecom giant’s Internet Essentials program, which provides internet access at as low as $9.95 per month for eligible households.

Meanwhile, outside of the library, a man who gave his name as Prince Chino (pictured above), said he had traveled from his home near Exit 8 on I‑91 to the Hill branch library on Tuesday specifically to use the internet.

Namely, he wanted to watch video clips from his favorite sports teams from his home city of Philadelphia.

Click on the video below to watch Tuesday’s press conference in full.