While New York City and Los Angeles make headlines with plans for free or affordable Internet, grassroots digital stewards in communities like Detroit and Red Hook, N.Y., are working to provide free internet access block by block.

For community foundations concerned about issues of the digital divide, keeping programs local and steady could be the key for progress in a landscape muddied by previous missteps. The urgency is real as research by the Open Technology Institute indicates that residents and businesses in U.S. cities pay more for slower speeds by comparison with other cities around the world. Fast, affordable and accessible Internet is increasingly necessary as information essential to strong communities moves online. 

“Cities really thought they could shoot this problem with a silver bullet —a cable company with either advertising revenue or for whatever reason — and then roll out citywide WiFi and everyone would have equal access,” says Joshua Breitbart, Director of Field Operations for Open Technology Institute. “It didn’t happen.” 

Breitbart is the author of The Philadelphia Story, a report that examined Philadephia’s star-crossed efforts to provide free WiFi for the entire city in the mid 2000s. The scenario is complex but ultimately those events are viewed as a turning point at which the term "not at taxpayer expense" became the mantra when addressing Internet accessibility issues.

Breitbart says that U.S. cities that have made serious investments in Internet infrastructure compare well with affordably priced overseas cities. But more is needed beyond the infrastructure and the hardware.

“What you need,” Breitbart says is “community leaders who can make sense of all these technologies and apply the lens of the community.”

This model works for communities that don't have wealthy donors but do have the ability to teach digital skills at the neighborhood level. The institute calls these leaders digital stewards.

A digital steward is someone in the community who takes responsibility for the entire digital ecosystem, for understanding what the community-level solution looks like. The solution could be an independent network, a Facebook page, a computer center, all three or a different combination altogether. The work of the steward is to match the right solution to the problem in that community. And the job often falls to the youth.

“The idea is to turn relationships and the skills and excitement of youth into networks. You still have to pay for equipment. You still need professional assistance, so it’s not free. But it does allow you to scale the network through community organizing,” Breitbart says.

One idea that stewards have been advancing in Detroit and Red Hook, N.Y. is that of a mesh network, which creates a small scale network of connected computers. Any group of people can create a mesh network, and they are popping up everyhwere.

A mesh network can work on a single block or citywide. There’s no law against mesh networking or getting together to buy a better class of Internet and sharing it and the costs, Breitbart says.

He says neighbors in Detroit are currently working on a neighbor-to-neighbor mesh network that operates off sponsored wifi. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, Red Hook, N.Y., has developed free community WiFi using a mesh network.

“If we had more community minded Internet service providers, the solution would scale more easily,” he says, pointing to smaller cities like St. Louis and Portland that are fashioning local ISP solutions.

Meanwhile in New York City, high profile donors are providing money and resources to improve WiFi in underserved areas.  

The city is launching a free WiFi network that will cover 95 blocks of Harlem and serve 80,000 Harlem residents, due to a $5 million gift from the Fuhrman Family Foundation, founders of which are friends of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It’s expected the network will provide free, fast outdoor Internet for portable devices. As such it will provide minimum service for people walking through the neighborhoods as well as some service for the neighborhoods themselves.

Google, too, is chipping in by building a publicly available wireless network around its headquarters in the Chelsea neighborhood.

As in most large cities, the free WiFi supplements a number of digital literacy tactics to improve access across the city’s five boroughs. Called New York Connected, the program provides digital literacy, equipment and discounted broadband to 6thgraders and high schoolers and their families using federal funds. Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Cablevision  are also matching federal funds to expand the availability and capacity of public computer centers in libraries, public housing facilities, senior centers and community centers located in New York City’s highest poverty areas.

In Los Angeles, city leaders have announced a plan to issue an RFP to install fiber to provide free Internet to all of its residents, businesses and government facilities. The city’s approach is bold. To win the bid, the vendor will be required to bear all costs, estimated at $3 billion to $5 billion, including the costs of permits and inspections required to lay the fiber. The selected vendor would also be required to run an “open” network, in which other network providers could buy access to deliver services. The speed of the free Internet would be 2Mbps to 5Mbps, allowing the winning provider to offer ramped up services including landline, phone and TV, as well as additional paid tiers of Internet services. 

For Los Angeles, the residential coverage is key because Los Angeles Unified School district just invested $1 billion in buying 665,000 high-end iPads for its students. To use them at home to do their homework, they will need Internet access.

What's different about LA's approach is that it is drawing on some of the better practices established since the 2000s.

"They are looking at what they are already spending on IT and how to get the most of that," Breitbart says. "They want a vendor to come in and build the network. They don't want a mimum level service, just WiFi. They want top notch fiber to the home that they can use well into the future."  

Issues to consider when establishing community Internet access

Susan B. Kretchmer, President of Partnership for Progress on the Digital Divide, offered this checklist of issues to consider in addressing Internet access issues in your hometown. The Partnership is a not-for-profit organization that brings together scholars, policymakers, and practitioners to make significant contributions in closing the digital divide.

• Network  ownership? Will private companies lead your effort to create accessible Internet? Will a nonprofit lead it? Large dollars are involved and all stakeholders have to be involved in making these decisions.
• What is the community benefit obligation of the network? It can’t simply be a profitmaking opportunity. It must be a true partnership between the community and the profit making company, much like TV stations operate in the public interest.
• Free and open communication. The municipality has to operate in best interests of the community and allow issues to be addressed.
• Economic development and competitiveness. Many small businesses cannot afford Internet services. Having municipal broadband is an economic driver.
• Privacy and security of the network is always an issue that must be discussed.
• How will the accessible network add to more efficient government and greater emergency safety services?
• Transparency. If the community is not involved in creating an accessible  community network, it will not succeed.