IBO is heating up quickly this summer! There are many updates that IBO cannot wait to share with you all, especially the stakeholder engagement efforts currently in place to close the digital divide.
IBO has engaged Guidehouse to execute public engagement by creating an anonymous survey to help inform Indiana's BEAD Five-Year Action Plan. IBO strongly encourages participation in the Indiana Broadband Office Survey to further close the digital divide for Hoosiers. IBO and Guidehouse collaborate with two goals in mind; (1) To ensure the Indiana Broadband Office has up-to-date information on the current state of broadband and broadband efforts in your communities. (2) To strategize with community leaders and understand wanted and needed efforts to include in the BEAD plan. Learn more from the Community Broadband Visioning Sessions.
In addition, Internet for All has best practices on how to prepare for IBO engagement to further lay out how stakeholders can participate locally. First when preparing, be familiar with existing resources and program requirements. To contribute, identify and amplify local community needs as well as build and strengthen a local, digital inclusion coalition. It is also critical to help identify gaps in access and adoption. To do so, visit the FCC maps to see the current reported speed to your home or business.
It’s been an exciting start to this summer and IBO can’t wait to see what is up ahead. Stay tuned to hear exciting updates and advancements for broadband in Indiana.
Earnie Holtrey
Deputy Director of the Indiana Broadband Office
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Last month, the IBO began travels around the state of Indiana for Community Broadband Visioning Sessions. The purpose of these sessions is to adequately understand and address the barriers to broadband deployment and unique community challenges, as part of the Five-Year Action Plan.
Travels are set to last from May 23 and continue for roughly six weeks. In this time, the IBO will have had the opportunity to connect with each county in Indiana.
By June 16, the team will have already made stops in 14 counties with chances to meet with more than 65 counties.
Stay tuned to IBO’s social media to stay up to date on the travels. To learn more about the Visioning Sessions, click here.
The bidding process for Round 6 of the Office of Community and Rural Affair’s (OCRA) Indiana Connectivity Program closed early in June, meaning the announcement of awarded addresses will come at the end of June or July.
For Round 6, OCRA will be spending the month of June creating the next challenge period and scoring/awarding this round. It is expected to have around 400-450 new addresses registered from Round 5.
Funding is awarded in an effort to connect residents and businesses that lack access to broadband internet service with service providers and assist in the expense of extending broadband to those locations. Round 5 funding awarded $842,865 to more than 200 addresses in 18 counties.
Stay tuned to the ICP website for the official announcement.
The digital equity planning process is ongoing. The task force will meet next week to continue hashing out draft goals and strategies informed by the survey, interviews, and Census data gathered. At the moment, three overarching goals have been drafted. We are super excited for the upcoming regional solutions sessions in July and August. Reach out to the Purdue Center for Regional Development or the Indiana Broadband Office for more information.
The Indiana Broadband Office is currently focused on the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) 5-Year Action Plan. The Community Visioning Sessions, hosted across the state to collect community input for this plan, have been extremely valuable. All feedback has been captured and will be used to develop the final Action Plan. Each session has highlighted unique strengths and challenges Hoosiers may face with broadband and has stimulated great discussion. Rush, Franklin, Crawford, Floyd, Switzerland, Parke, Pike, Greene, Wabash, Blackford and Allen Counties have been visited, and the remaining in-person Visioning Sessions in Cass, Warren, Pulaski, Lake, Marion, Brown and Elkhart Counties will be conducted by the end of June, with a virtual session in the works as well.
In tandem with these sessions, the IBO has been working on the 5-Year Action Plan draft itself. There has been a concentration on documenting Indiana’s current state of broadband, along with the vision and goals for the future state of broadband. Over the coming weeks, the IBO will continue to flesh out this plan and what implementation processes may look like to achieve the State’s vision for broadband.
For more regarding BEAD, click here. For more regarding the Visioning Sessions, click here.
To ensure we are representing you and understand your broadband reality, we are proud to announce the launch of ConnectingIndiana.com through Ready.net. If you know someone without internet, they can text 463-946-4699.
This tool is meant to help you directly convey the problems you face regarding broadband to our office. It is extremely important to take the test multiple times over different days to help us fully understand your situation.
The IBO prioritizes transparency and is excited to state that the site also contains broadband data and maps for every county and city. These maps highlight the work to be done and that we will not rest until every home is connected to affordable, reliable, high-speed internet.
More Hoosiers will soon be getting better access to broadband.
Lawrence County and AT&T have announced that more than 2,300 Indiana residents will benefit from the partnership to build AT&T Fiber in the county. This project is estimated to be around $3.6 million in broadband expansion. AT&T Fiber is already established in Indiana, as more than 500,000 Hoosiers have access to it.
We’re proud to see broadband becoming more accessible in Indiana, and we’re looking forward to our goal of bringing better broadband to our state.
Read the full release here.
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