Joshua Edmonds had a big goal at hand when he met with members of Cleveland City Council in June 2023: Convince the city DigitalC was worthy of tens of millions of dollars to hook Clevelanders up with quality, cheap internet and convince Clevelanders to pick them over other, more established ISPs.
That also meant convincing subscribes that the $18/month base rate for internet would stay $18/month.
“We don’t get you into some type of promotional rate and then within one year, we’re making you pay something else,” he told Council at the time. “That’s not our model. We don’t believe in that. That’s in our opinion, a bit predatory.”
A year and a half after DigitalC began connecting Cleveland, Edmonds is championing the success of the model—cheap, city-subsidized Wi-Fi—that is being replicated in cities like Detroit.
DigitalC signed a $20 million deal with Cleveland to provide internet to at least 23,500 households by 2028, funded by a portion of the city’s ARPA dollars. DigitalC only gets its full yearly payment if it meets a certain annual threshhold. While progress was slow initially — the nonprofit missed its 2024 benchmark of 3,500 by 600 and got docked $1 million by City Council — there are now 7,600 subscribers.
Gaining the ability to legally canvass neighborhoods is what has led to hitting the goal in 2025, Edmonds said.
Consistent, good service at that price point is an easy sell, it turns out. The company has a 4.8 star rating based on 195 Google reviews, with many citing how impressed they were with an ISP that was relatively unknown a year or two prior.
“I was very skeptical” at first, Terry McNeil commented. “Promising [fast] service through the air is a tall task but the price was to hard to pass up.”
“I am free from the evils of Spectrum and AT&T,” John Elliot wrote. “No frills or weirdness with the same performance of a $109/mo Spectrum plan.”
In an interview Tuesday, Edmonds attributed the bulk of the praise and happy users not to any flashy TV spots, Instagrams ads, or wider media campaigns. A good portion of DigitalC’s customers never had internet previously, he said, and even drive to its office in Midtown to pay their internet bill in cash or check.
“Most of that success is because of word-of-mouth, really,” Edmonds told Scene in a phone call. “People just telling people they’re happy with the service.”
Years ago, before City Council even entertained paying for a Cleveland-based ISP, the city had one of the largest digital divides in the country. Just half of Cleveland households had internet connections in 2019.
It’s what’s led to a modern-day form of redlining, where Wi-Fi is a luxury rather than a base-line utility. Which Edmonds said he’s aiming to reverse, a mission that’s led his team to coin the phrase “greenlining.”
Edmonds said he’s so happy with how the model’s grown in Cleveland that he wants to replicate in in Detroit. As of December, a city-funded pilot project there has connected roughly 450 Detroit homes.
Not just to YouTube or Facebook, he noted. But to virtual doctor’s appointments. To SNAP applications. To find work, keep the power on, stay in touch with their kids.
“People, they use our internet to access social services,” Edmonds said. “They use it to find jobs, pay bills, pretty much everything they couldn’t do before with just their phone.”
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