New York City is in the process of dismantling low-cost community broadband infrastructure in public housing that, if supported, could provide quality access to the internet for hundreds of thousands of families. It’s being replaced by a $90 million, three-year government subsidy, called “Big Apple Connect” that instead gives a contract to big internet providers Optimum and Spectrum Communications (Charter).
This existing broadband network was built in 2021 mainly by three community cooperatives: Metro IAF, BlocPower and People’s Choice Communications (PCC). These cooperatives built this network after former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced New York City’s Internet Master Plan in January 2020, which set out to deliver broadband for low-income New Yorkers by investing in public fiber infrastructure. Since, then, the pandemic in 2020 exposed a digital divide that the current mayor’s office knows it must attempt to bridge. Yet instead of building off the network infrastructure already installed, it appears the Mayor’s Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI) is choosing to tear it down. In its place, the city is giving this massive three-year contract to big telecom companies—including one that has previously been untruthful to New York residents.
Cable Already Failed NYC
Charter, the parent company of Spectrum, has been controversial in New York State for years. This is not only because of their five-year front-page fights with unions, but also because the company has a bad track record when it comes to meeting their promises. Charter Communications had to pay $174.2 million in a settlement with then New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood’s office, following a 2017 lawsuit in which the New York Attorney General’s office sued the internet provider over misleading claims of internet speeds. The lawsuit, which was then led by Attorney General Eric Schne
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