This Cooperative Internet Service Pioneers a Novel Approach to Bridging the Digital Divide

The dream of free, high-speed, community-owned internet was once a reality in New York City . The People’s Choice Communications , a worker and community-owned internet cooperative, launched in 2020 and, thanks to subsidies afforded by the Affordable Connectivity Program , successfully offered fast, cheap internet in the Bronx while the ACP was still active.

However, the city's decision to exclude the co-op from the Big Apple Connect program puts the People's Choice at risk caused by losing thousands of subscribers.

“No one believed that we could actually build out the system,” said Troy Walcott, president of People’s Choice Communications, “and then we built it.”

Starting from scratch

"The People's Choice" is an unexpected and uncommon tale about broadband access. It all started with Spectrum workers going on strike.

In 2017, 1,800 Spectrum employees walked out on strike Due to the lack of fulfilled healthcare and retirement benefit needs following Charter Communications’ acquisition of Time Warner Cable in 2016, forty employees chose to address these issues directly by establishing their own internet service provider with an emphasis on fairness rather than profit.

Rather than distributing substantial profits among executives such as CEOs," Walcott explained, "we redirect these earnings back into the infrastructure to support services for regions typically overlooked by internet service providers focused solely on profitability.

The concept is straightforward: both workers and subscribers collectively own the network. Employees from People’s Choice handle the construction and upkeep of the infrastructure, whereas residents contribute through monthly payments and take part in decision-making processes.

Connecting the neighborhood, structure by structure

People’s Choice used a mesh network to get buildings online, installing millimeter-wave antennas on rooftops to receive signals. The initial setup was similar to NYC Mesh , another free internet service provider in the city. Since then, the co-op has expanded to fiber internet service for added reliability.

The New York City "Internet Master Strategy" Former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s program aimed at making the internet more affordable and accessible enlisted the People’s Choice, along with several other smaller Internet Service Providers (ISPs), to connect structures within the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). This collaboration provided substantial financial support for the recently established cooperative.

"Erik Forman, co-founder and labor activist, stated that during the pandemic, they established a network which catered to more than 1,000 homes in public and affordable housing sectors, offering them complimentary, high-speed internet," he added. worker-owned driver cooperative in the city.

Currently, People's Choice provides 200 options. megabits per second With equal download and upload speeds available for only $30 per month, plans also include a 500 Mbps option at $45 each month and a 1,000 Mbps plan for $60 monthly. To provide some comparison, Spectrum charges $50 per month for their 500 Mbps service and $70 for their 1,000 Mbps offering, which positions People’s Choice as a strong contender in the market.

The struggle for internet accessibility continues unabated.

Since launching the service, People’s Choice has faced several roadblocks, the biggest of which was the city’s decision to cut the co-op out of the Big Apple Connect program.

Following a shift in local government leadership, the Big Apple Connect program essentially supplanted the Internet Master Plan. This new initiative was introduced in 2022 under Mayor Eric Adams and the New York City's Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI) aims to close the city's digital gap by providing complimentary internet access to NYCHA residents for a period of three years.

Which internet companies were selected by the city to lead the Big Apple Connect program instead of People’s Choice? They chose Spectrum and Optimum Internet .

As per Walcott, the primary clientele of the cooperative were based at the Melrose Houses, an NYCHA project where the co-op had nearly finished constructing approximately 90%. Alongside advancements made in various other NYCHA locations, this brought the People’s Choice service near to reaching over 5,000 units serviced. However, the city refused to grant People’s Choice a permit allowing them to keep operating within the Melrose area; consequently, the co-op needed to take away all their installations from these structures.

“OTI telling NYCHA to both remove us from the buildings we were in and not let us expand to any other buildings totally destroyed every area we had worked on to that point,” Walcott said.

Although The People’s Choice remains functional, Walcott stated that the staff has been considerably cut back, with the cooperative now concentrating on broadening its fiber internet offerings.

Echoes across the country

Municipally owned internet networks are becoming a more favored option compared to traditional private internet service providers controlled by established companies, and they are thus Institute for Local Self-Reliance documents up to 450 publicly owned internet networks nationwide -- a figure that does not include internet cooperatives.

Although internet cooperatives form part of the public internet network, they are generally established by incumbent telephone and electric utility companies, frequently operating in rural regions. remnants of utility cooperatives established during the New Deal era . Certain instances encompass the RS Fiber Cooperative in Minnesota and the Central Virginia Electric Cooperative’s Firefly Fiber Broadband .

Pure-play broadband cooperatives are very uncommon," stated Christopher Ali, a telecommunications specialist and professor at Penn State University. "They are few and far between.

Launching an internet cooperative from the ground up isn’t a simple or inexpensive task; as Ali points out, establishing telephone and electric cooperatives tends to be more straightforward due to their ready access to established business models and resources.

"By including employees and labor representatives at decision-making tables, and understanding the roots of our company, we can significantly ensure customer satisfaction with top-notch, affordable broadband services. Additionally, this approach allows us to secure fair wages for employees so they can earn a respectable living," stated Ali.

At first, People’s Choice proposed maintaining a municipally owned network and submitted a plan to the city for this purpose; however, nothing ever materialized from it.

Rather than relying solely on traditional methods, a mix of grants, private investments, and low-cost funds provided by the ACP enabled the cooperative to launch operations in the Bronx, which is known as one of the least connected districts within the city, based on reports. report from the New York State Comptroller .

I believe people truly recognized that we were tackling several significant societal issues," Forman stated. "Our objective wasn’t merely to provide inexpensive or even free Internet access; it was also about generating employment opportunities for the striking workers and achieving a higher degree of scalability.

“When we were up and running at the highest, and we had installed in the Bronx and NYCHA developments,” said Walcott, “we were able to hire digital stewards that were working with the company to help sign up their friends and neighbors for a service, as well as some basic digital literacy training.”

People's Choice provided members with subsidized laptops priced at just $11 as an additional benefit under the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). Walcott mentioned that over time, the initiative would incorporate participatory budgeting into the cooperative structure.

What happens next?

“So even though initiatives such as Big Apple Connect offer internet services temporarily at no cost to NYCHA residents, what occurs once this support ends?” asked Walcott. “Additionally, what about the numerous nearby structures and communities facing similar circumstances yet remain incapable of accessing these services at reduced prices?”

Although the Big Apple Connect service has been prolonged until 2027, OTI hasn’t disclosed any plans for extending it further. Following their removal from the program, People’s Choice sent a FOIL request to OTI seeking details about the Big Apple Connect contract. As stated by Foman, the city has asked for several extensions related to this original request over the past few years. Consequently, the cooperative has lodged an official grievance concerning the FOIL request with municipal authorities.

Even with the significant decline in both subscribers and income resulting from the Big Apple Connect choice, Walcott and Forman still hold an optimistic outlook for the future of the People’s Choice.

“These are David and Goliath struggles,” Forman said. “So if you don’t have as much money or power, you’ve got to be smart and strategic. But the key is to just don’t stop.”