CLEVELAND — The CEO of the local technology nonprofit DigitalC believes the organization’s programs and services are a natural evolution of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s Dream.
“When we look at the (digital) divide, it’s a paradigm. It’s a paradigm of inequity,” says DigitalC CEO Joshua Edmonds. “That same inequity that MLK was able to see up close and he was able to fight, we are seeing the same thing in the digital form.”
Cleveland’s troubling digital divide was exposed during the pandemic when important services and activities, like doctor appointments, job applications, work, and school, shifted online. Many city residents lacked access to high-speed internet, a fact the National Digital Inclusion Alliance highlighted when the organization identified Cleveland as the worst connected large city in 2019.
“That is our Digital Civil Rights movement, ensuring that everybody, no matter where they live in the city of Cleveland, no matter their age, no matter their demographic, will be able to have the same price plan, the same quality of service,” Edmonds explains. “Everybody will be able to compete fairly in our digital world."
In Cleveland’s east side Fairfax neighborhood, longtime residents Carl and Carolyn Wilson are enjoying access to DigitalC’s renamed internet service Canopy for just $18 a month.
“We’re senior citizens and a lot of the people that live around here are too,” Carolyn Wilson says. “To have an expensive internet, and I think everybody needs it, it’s hard.”
Her husband Carl is impressed with the reasonable price and the service associated with DigitalC’s Canopy.
“Sometime(s) you get something that may … work within your budget, but the service is not good. But with DigitalC, we are completely satisfied.”
Cleveland based nonprofit Connect Your Community recently used FCC broadband data to show how Cuyahoga County’s lowest-income neighborhoods are more likely to get old and slow service from AT&T.
“What we sometimes say is that the future is here, it's just been inequitably distributed,” Edmonds points out.
According to a November AP News article, “poorer, less white neighborhoods similar to Fairfax, were found to have received lower investment in broadband infrastructure and offered worse deals for internet service than comparatively whiter and higher-income areas.”
DigitalC is addressing this digital divide by building a city-wide network in less than 18 months with a goal of acquiring 3500 new subscribers.
“Every Cleveland household would be able to subscribe to DigitalC's Canopy plan, which is $18 a month internet at symmetrical speeds at which people have never seen in this city.”
The $18 per month fee adds up to $216 per year, a number equivalent to Cleveland’s 216 area code.
“It’s nice to be a part of other people, especially in the inner city, getting things that they need,” Carolyn Wilson says. “It kind of like unites us with everybody else who are able to afford internet and other things.”
According to a press release from Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s office, DigitalC is receiving funding from BroadbandOhio, the city of Cleveland, the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Supporting Foundation and the David and Inez Myers Foundation to complete the $53 million project.