California was awarded more than $1.8 billion in federal funding to expand access to affordable, high-speed internet in the state, U.S. senators Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla announced on Monday.
Approximately one in five Californians lacks access to reliable and affordable high-speed internet, Feinstein said in the announcement.
The funding comes out of the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment, or BEAD, program, which is a federal grant program that aims to get all Americans online.
BEAD prioritizes areas and communities with Americans that have little to no internet access.
“Access to high-speed internet is essential infrastructure, but for too long, low-income and underserved communities have been shut out of educational and economic opportunities due to a lack of affordable and reliable access to internet,” Padilla said in the announcement.
In a speech on Monday, President Joe Biden stated that these communities include “rural communities like Appalachia. It includes Tribal lands from Alaska to the Dakotas, coastal towns from Hawaii to the Pacific Northwest. It also includes suburban communities, even cities, neighborhoods.”
California alone has received a total of more than $6.9 billion from the federal government to date for broadening access to broadband.
In addition to attempting to bridge the digital equity gap, the program aims to create manufacturing jobs deploying fiber and using materials made in America.
The Biden-Harris administration is dedicating $43.4 billion to the BEAD program to build infrastructure that will increase internet access across the country as a part of their Internet for All initiative.
The BEAD program is funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which has allocated more than $220 billion to infrastructure projects across the nation. More than 35,000 infrastructure projects across the country are funded or underway due to the law, including a grant to retrofit San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge for earthquake readiness.
“These transformative investments will help address this equity gap and ensure that all Californians—regardless of zip code—can remain connected,” Padilla said.
The federal government will connect every person in America to reliable high-speed internet by 2030, Biden stated.
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