City leaders met Tuesday to announce the new Pittsburgh Digital Equity Coalition.
More than 30% of Pittsburgh's poor and elderly residents don't have reliable internet access. Mayor Ed Gainey wants to change that.
“Far too long, far too long we have known the truth about the digital divide that our seniors and black and brown children have been left behind…we will remove the digital divide and make it possible for everyone to have broadband access.”
A new coalition is made up of representatives from city and the county’s housing authorities, Pittsburgh Regional Transit, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, the University of Pittsburgh and the United Way of Southwestern Pennsylvania.
They'll begin working right away on a 5-year plan to provide internet, devices, and training to all residents by 2027.
The full details of the plan aren’t set to be released until the second quarter of 2023 and no official cost of the expansion is known.
Congress has a Build Back Better Act that has a budget of about $1 billion to make broadband more accessible, with around $475 million of it for grants to distribute computers or laptops.
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