The Association Blog

Are there areas in your community that don’t have access to broadband services? Here are resources for finding out.

Are your employment, adoptions & volunteer applications online only? What about post-adoption resources, or info about where to go for low-cost services? It’s easy to assume that everyone has access to the Internet—and to assume that’s how they want to access your services—but have you tested those assumptions? Have you considered those folks in your communities who have slow or no Internet?

Dalbin Osorio posed these questions in last week’s webinar, Virtual Equity: What It Means & How We Create it. As you begin to explore these issues, you may want to determine which areas in your community don’t have access to broadband services.

Resources include:
FCC National Broadband Map (scroll down to access the map)
Broadband Need Map
Broadband Health Map (allows you to overlay connectivity over health data at the national, state, and county levels)

In addition to the above, Osorio recommends reaching out to local universities and community colleges, which often have access to this data point—and many more. “The Department of Labor tracks acesss as well, and don’t forget your local community council. They’ll likely be willing to share if they know you are using it to find out how to best serve all populations in your community.”

For more on this topic, listen to the recorded webinar.

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Photo: U.S. Department of Commerce/National Telecommunications and Information Administration