Libraries and Health Care Providers play key role in Broadband Expansion
In 2010, the NTIA awarded more than $450 million in matching grants to establish or upgrade public computer centers and initiate innovative broadband adoption programs in underserved communities. Four years later, that investment has resulted in more than 3,000 new or improved public computer centers and produced 600,000 new household broadband subscriptions.
These grants complement the $3.4 billion in infrastructure investments from NTIA that have enabled BTOP grant recipients to connect more than 21,000 community anchor institutions with ultra-fast broadband, including 2,400 medical and health care providers, more than 1,300 libraries, and 8,000 K-12 schools.
Schools, libraries, and health care providers were pivotal in making this rapid expansion possible. These anchor institutions already had close ties to their communities, recognized the enormous benefits high-speed Internet affords, and possessed skilled staff to organize classes and broker learning resources.
Today at the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition annual conference, the NTIA released four more of the 15 case studies that detail the impact of the BTOP public computer center and sustainable broadband adoption awards. With this release a total of seven studies are available to the public.