Prioritizing Digital Equity with Neighborhood Wi-Fi and Universal Broadband
Fort Worth, TXExpanding upon a program launched with CARES Act funding, the city of Fort Worth, Texas dedicated $5.9 million in fiscal ARPA recovery funds to deliver free Wi-Fi to households living in five historically underserved communities of color disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The temporary digital architecture of hundreds of Wi-Fi boxes has connected 8,000 households to reliable internet service. Viewing broadband as essential infrastructure and critical to its economic development strategy, the City is now funding the construction of a 300-mile fiber network backbone to provide broadband for the whole city, with the intention of providing free or affordable access to all low-income households. Christina Brooks, Chief Equity Officer and the Director of the Department of Diversity and Inclusion in Fort Worth says, “We were looking at broadband internet as a municipal service, in the same sense that we look at transportation, streets, sidewalks, street lights, and water.”
Why this investment?
While digital access had been a theme in Fort Worth’s equity efforts, it had never been a standalone priority until the pandemic revealed how vital connectivity is to participate in modern life. Some neighborhoods of the City lacked internet access completely, while others had insufficient access to support the e-learning, telemedicine appointments, and remote jobs that became essential overnight. “I think we all have realized the internet is ubiquitous,“ Sallie Trotter, Assistant Director of IT Solutions with the city of Fort Worth said. “And if you don't have access to it, then you're already at a setback point.”
The City kicked off the program with $5 million dollars from the CARES Act, first providing hot spots to families with children in school and then working with the Fort Worth Independent School District to install internet servers in schools in five target neighborhoods. Parents would drive to the school parking lots and connect to these access points to stream video lessons.
During this time, the City also experienced how the digital divide was affecting its ability to provide aid to the community. Kevin Dunn, IT Solutions Director and Chief Technology Officer for the city of Fort Worth, explains that when they looked into the root causes of the initially low response rates to their rental, mortgage, utility, and business assistance programs, the City found that lack of sufficient internet access was the culprit.
Recognizing the City alone could not provide internet service due to Texas law, the IT and equity team’s brainstormed solutions, resulting in the idea for the Neighborhood WiFi investment. Dunn notes, “We started thinking about how we could extend the Wi-Fi that we offer in public buildings, things like community centers, libraries, and other spaces out into the surrounding neighborhoods,” Dunn said. “We own a lot of facilities in the neighborhoods. We own light poles, we own other types of utility poles, and other buildings in the neighborhoods. We thought it could be a good foundation to provide that Wi-Fi signal to homes.”
What is this investment?
To develop a more robust digital infrastructure, the city of Fort Worth partnered with the private sector digital communications companies Cisco and Presidio to develop the Neighborhood Wi-Fi network in five target neighborhoods: Ash Crescent, Lake Como, Northside, Rosemont, and Stop Six.
The team installed the servers, working on full deployment in each neighborhood at a time. They overcame various challenges ranging from supply chain disruption, neighborhood topography, and even awaiting the arrival of nesting hawks to complete the installation across the five neighborhoods. Currently, the server access points offer two megabits bandwidth available to each person using the Wi-Fi, sufficient for zoom meetings and telemedicine appointments. The servers have a lifespan of five to seven years.
Maintaining the service is the second half of the team’s charge, and they’ve needed to strategically navigate changing signal strengths across seasons and through rainstorms, as well as car wrecks, collapsing poles, and theft. Foreseeing these obstacles, the staff bought spare servers upfront.
To maintain data privacy, the hotspot connections do not gather any individual data but instead track aggregate data to manage the quality of the service and measure usage. The service uses Net Nanny software to filter unsafe material for children, and the web team monitors the network continually to keep out rogue access points and ensure a safe browsing experience.
Centering equity in the program
To identify the target neighborhoods for the Wi-Fi network, the City reviewed maps of social vulnerability and racial demographics across Fort Worth’s neighborhoods, and also conferred with the school district about which areas were having the most challenges in access to online learning. Initially, the team used their maps of Super Majority Minority Areas and Majority Minority Areas (MMA) to identify five priority neighborhoods. Later, they switched to using the more holistic Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), but the neighborhoods identified as most underserved remained the same.
Communicating with neighborhood residents about the new Wi-Fi service, especially focusing on reaching those who speak Spanish or Vietnamese, was a key element of equitable implementation. The City had been relying on ad hoc methods to translate materials, but the 2022 budget allocated funds to hire a dedicated language access specialist to ensure high-quality, consistent translation. The City worked with neighborhood organizers, community organizations, and churches to get the word out and distribute flyers in English and Spanish publicizing the service.
Feedback from residents in the five underserved communities has driven the City to “keep upping the ante” in terms of digital infrastructure. The City’s review of recent Census data revealing how demographics were shifting both in terms of the arrival of new immigrants as well as the movement of Black and Latinx families into new neighborhoods in the City also pushed them toward a citywide solution.
Outcomes to date
Fort Worth completed the installation in the fall of 2023 with 325 access points deployed throughout Ash Crescent, Lake Como, Northside, Rosemont, and Stop Six. As of December 2023, 5,500 computers, tablets, and phones in the communities have connected to the network.
Toward transformative change
What began as an emergency response to address digital inequities has evolved into a permanent solution to ensure reliable, affordable broadband internet throughout Fort Worth. In February 2022, the City issued an RFP looking for a company to build a broadband fiber network backbone that would ensure free internet access for residents living on low-incomes while providing robust digital infrastructure for the whole city. In November 2023, the City approved a $7.5 million contract with Dallas-based Sprocket Networks, Inc. to construct the 300-mile network over the next three years. Funding will come from ARPA and other sources.
How did this Texas city manage to invest in the internet as public infrastructure? Brooks says that linking a rights-based approach with the economic case for broadband has been their key to success. While everyone may not agree that the City needs to provide internet access to all, it is clear that digital infrastructure is critical to attaining their economic goals. “If you want to be business friendly and you want to be a tech capital, then you’ve got to have digital access,” Brooks says.