In 2020, former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled an Internet Master Plan that was one of the most ambitious municipal broadband proposals in U.S. history. 

It detailed a $2.1 billion commitment to deploy publicly-owned, open-access fiber across the city’s five boroughs, promising to reshape how the nation's largest city would connect a then-estimated 1.5 million city residents without Internet access.

Then, Mayor Eric Adams came into office and quietly killed it.

Now, with new Mayor Zohran Mamdani – whose entire political brand is built on making essential services affordable to the people who need them most – pursuing a popular affordability agenda that has energized his base and inspired electoral interest far outside the Big Apple, the prospect for a city-wide municipal Internet network is back on the radar.

Last week, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams – a non-voting member of the New York City Council with the right to introduce and co-sponsor legislation – released a detailed “Get Connected” report calling “for the city to deliver high-speed, low-cost citywide municipal Internet service akin to a public utility,” laying the policy groundwork for what at least has the potential to become the Mamdani administration's signature infrastructure initiative.

The Cost of Killing the Master Plan

At a press conference with advocates and tenants at the Grand Street Guild Housing Complex, where NYC Mesh has successfully installed fiber connections, Williams said “in the [I]nternet age, we cannot afford to be disconnected, yet many can’t afford to connect.”

Studies consistently show that the primary reason millions of households do not have home Internet service boils down to affordability.

Research by EducationSuperHighway indicates that of the estimated 28.2 million households in the U.S. that do not have high-speed Internet service, 18 million of those households (home to 48 million Americans) are not online because the cost of service is simply too expensive.

But now, thanks to a recently published study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, broadband affordability advocates may be able to more accurately measure the elusive nature of affordable broadband costs.

The study also examines how to better pinpoint contributing factors like the state of local infrastructure and how lower-performing broadband access technologies powerfully influence low-income households' decision to sometimes choose cellular service-only over home Internet service.

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“Broadband Affordability: Assessing the Cost of Broadband for Low-and-Moderate Income Communities in Cities” provides a research-driven lens on how to measure broadband affordability neighborhood by neighborhood, city to city.

“While national and state-level analyses have helped highlight the digital divide,” the study’s author Ambika Nair writes, “measures of broadband affordability at the community level are limited.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams recently unveiled plans to improve public safety, housing, and the overall livability of the Big Apple.

Among them is $6 million in new funding to expand the New York Public Library’s (NYPL) “Neighborhood Internet” network, providing free Internet to an additional 2,000 households receiving Section 8 rental assistance.

The city hopes that the program, which is first focused on expanding Internet access to low-income households in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, will ultimately be expanded to reach as many low income NYC residents as possible. But the effort still remains a far cry from the bolder, bigger, “master plan” initiative scrapped by the Adams administration in 2022.

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Low income city residents simply need a library card to connect to the NYPL network in the limited parts of the city where access is currently being offered. The NYPL has experimented with Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), fixed wireless, and some fiber for connectivity. The program also provides low income users with a Chromebook with Wi-Fi access.

New York State officials have unveiled the first round of broadband deployment grants made possible by the state’s $100 million Affordable Housing Connectivity Program (AHCP), which aims to drive affordable fiber and Wi-Fi to low-income state residents trapped on the wrong side of the digital divide.

As part of the program, the state recently announced it will be spending $13.1 million to connect 14,167 lower income residents across Buffalo, Rochester, upper Manhattan and the Bronx with both affordable gigabit-capable fiber – and low cost Wi-Fi.

Flume, the partner ISP chosen by the state, will offer residents the choice of three broadband tiers: 100/20 megabit per second (Mbps) fiber for $10 per month, symmetrical 200 Mbps fiber for $15 per month, and symmetrical 1 gigabit per second (Gbps) fiber for $30 per month. All three subsidized fiber options will be locked at that price point until 2034, according to the state.

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“In today's digital age, access to reliable, affordable high-speed Internet isn't just about convenience – it's about ensuring every New Yorker can participate fully in our modern economy and society,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said of the new grants. “Through these strategic investments, we're not only installing fiber and infrastructure, we're opening doors to education, healthcare and economic opportunity.”

Faster, Better, Cheaper

As Digital Inclusion Week 2024 swings into action, frontline digital inclusion practitioners from across the nation will come together for a timely Building for Digital Equity (#B4DE) livestream event today that focuses on “Coalition Building for Success.”

The popular (and free) virtual gathering – co-hosted by Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) Community Broadband Networks Initiative and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) – will go live today from 3 to 4:15 PM ET.

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For Digital equity advocates or interested guests who have yet register for the event, there is still time to register here.

The third #B4DE of the year will delve into how coalitions are finding success in pushing the digital equity movement forward as Digital Equity Act grant programs are being established.

The keynote speaker for today’s livestream will be Georgia Savage, Deputy Director of #OaklandUndivided, who helped lead the way in securing $38.5 million in grant funding that will expand broadband infrastructure and distribute Internet-connected devices to thousands of low-income households across East and West Oakland, California.

In this week’s round-up of broadband news, we culled three stories we think are worth reading.

How Much is Fast Enough?

The first is a story from Ars Technica – FCC chair: Speed standard of 25Mbps down, 3Mbps up isn’t good enough anymore – written by veteran IT reporter Jon Brodkin.

For years now, broadband-for-all advocates have lamented the FCC’s minimum broadband speed standard of 25 Megabits per second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload as being laughably antiquated. Indeed, it’s been almost three years since we made the case for Why 25/3 Broadband Is Not Sufficient, though it was outdated long before then.

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But as Brodkin reported this week, the FCC’s minimum speed standard “could finally change under Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, who is proposing a fixed broadband standard of 100Mbps downloads and 20Mbps uploads along with a goal of bringing affordable service at those speeds to all Americans.”

Under Rosenworcel’s plan, the FCC would look at availability, speeds, and prices to determine whether the agency should take regulatory actions under Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act, which requires the FCC to determine if high-speed Internet access is being deployed "on a reasonable and timely basis" to all Americans.

Last November we noted how New York City had scrapped its longstanding plan to build a promising open access fiber network. Not only did that stark reversal leave many partner ISPs high and dry after years of planning, some local community-run ISPs now say the city is forcing them to remove existing free service to affordable housing developments.

People’s Choice Communications, a small NYC cooperative cobbled together by striking Charter Communications workers, was one of several ISPs left in a lurch by the sudden reversal by the Adams administration.

Adding insult to injury, the ISP is now being told by the city to pull existing service provided for free to marginalized communities in The Bronx.

New York City’s original master plan was poised to be a game changer when it was first introduced back in 2020. The plan not only included a pilot program designed to bring affordable broadband to 450,000 residents of New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) buildings, but a plan to spend $156 million on a pilot open access fiber network.

The proposal was to showcase the real-world benefits of the open access model, which data suggests results in significantly lower costs and higher quality service thanks to increased competition. If successful, the city would have then considered a bigger $2.1 billion plan to deploy such a network citywide, providing a template for major metropolitan areas nationwide.

New Mayor, Old Playbook

With the election of a new mayor, everything changed.

In 2020, New York City officials unveiled a massive new broadband proposal they promised would dramatically reshape affordable broadband access in the city.

Instead, the program has been steadily and quietly dismantled, replaced by a variety of costly half-measures that critics say don’t solve the actual, underlying cause of expensive, substandard broadband.

The New York City Internet Master Plan was ambitious. The plan featured a pilot program designed to bring affordable broadband to 45,000 residents of New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) buildings, a major streamlining of broadband deployment bureaucracy, and several initiatives prioritizing subscriber privacy and choice.

At the heart of the proposal was a plan to spend $156 million to create citywide fiber and wireless open access networks in underserved portions of the city that would be open to all competitors. The plan specifically targeted the most underserved parts of the city, given officials estimated it would cost $2.1 billion to deploy such a network city wide. 

“The private market has failed to deliver the [I]nternet in a way that works for all New Yorkers,” the plan said, pointing out that 29 percent of city households lacked broadband, and 46 percent of families living below the poverty line lacked service due to high prices.

City officials predicted that their plan to boost competition would create 165,000 new jobs, result in a $49 billion increase in personal income, and create up to $142 billion in incremental gross city product by 2045 – all while delivering faster, more affordable broadband to 1.5 million city residents currently without access.

But elections have consequences.

In June of 2022, new New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that the city would be “pausing” the entire initiative for “re-evaluation.” Insiders familiar with the decision making process say the pause was more of an abrupt cancellation, leaving planners and network built partners high and dry after several years of careful preparation and planning. 

Join us live on Thursday, September 22, at 4pm ET for the latest episode of the Connect This! Show. Co-hosts Christopher Mitchell (ILSR) and Travis Carter (USI Fiber) will be joined by regular guests Kim McKinley (UTOPIA Fiber) and Doug Dawson (CCG Consulting). They'll dig into the recent New York City announcement that it would subsidize connection costs for hundreds of thousands in public housing, Tennessee's recent grant announcements, upcoming and dramatic speed increases announced by Comcast, and how the increasing cost of labor, materials, and now capital is affecting new fiber builds.

Email us at [email protected] with feedback and ideas for the show.

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