Cleveland City Council Hits Pause on Plan to Give $20 Million to DigitalC for Expanded Low-Cost Internet Service

A future coverage map from DigitalC, which council discussed Thursday as Cleveland’s newest citywide broadband provider. It’s possible, CEO Joshua Edmonds told council, that the new service could offer super-fast WiFi to some 127,000 Clevelanders—if council decides it’s ready. Credit: Mark Oprea

In an effort to heal Cleveland’s longstanding digital divide, Mayor Justin Bibb recently announced intentions to use $20 million in ARPA dollars to help DigitalC expand its low-cost services across the entire city.

Last Thursday, that plan hit a minor hiccup as Cleveland city council, after a two-hour Utilities Committee meeting, pushed the legislation down the road to July following questions about DigitalC’s past promises and future reliability.

Utilities Chair Brian Kazy decided to revisit DigitalC’s proposal in a July council meeting, following a motion by Councilman Michael Polensek.

Polensek, who offered a wealth of interrogation, seemed doubtful about how DigitalC CEO Joshua Edmonds saw the company’s current customer base—some 2,000 Clevelanders—translated into navigating a proposed city-wide service for some 127,000. And, council members noted, DigitalC has previously pledged to quickly expand services but has failed to do so.

Some 30% of Clevelanders lack a household internet connection, according to Census data.

“That’s important. Again, as I said, [this is] over $20 million deposit,” Polensek reminded Edmonds near the end of Thursday’s meeting. “We want to make sure there’s there’s a domino effect as it pertains to vendors, suppliers, employees, people who will benefit, Cleveland residents, Cleveland businesses that will benefit from the installation and operation of the system. If we don’t look out for our home, no one else will—and it’s become very clear to me over the years that we have to.”

City Hall issued the initial request for proposal back in June 2022.

In DigitalC CEO Joshua Edmonds’ pitch to the committee, the tech nonprofit, formerly known as OneCleveland, felt like a near panacea for Cleveland long-standing status as one of the nation’s worst-connected big cities: a system, to be built up in full by 2026, that would ultimately serve up to 127,000 residents with 100 megabits/second broadband for about $18/month.

Joshua Edmonds, the CEO of DigitalC, said, in plain terms, that Cleveland’s digital divide—the 30 percent of Clevelanders that have zero internet access at home—could be healed before decade’s end. Credit: Mark Oprea

A “first of its kind” broadband package, as Edmonds’ sold it to council.

“These numbers are very significant,” Edmonds, a self-titled intrapreneur since 2016, told the committee, referring to DigitalC’s statistics. “Because not only are we more than doubling the federal standard”—that’s about 25 Mbps—”but this product does not exist anywhere right now in the city of Cleveland.”

Edmonds is right. Most legacy providers of speeds DigitalC is vowing to offer, providers like Spectrum and Verizon, charge $50 to $70/month for that service.

And, unlike such big name companies, Edmonds said that DigitalC would offer these speeds without the typical qualifying proof—that one lives under the poverty line, or is low-income. Moreover, the $18/month fee isn’t “promotional,” Edmond said.

“This isn’t that. No qualifications,” Edmonds said. “Every Clevelander who wants an $18 product, that’s it. You don’t have to qualify.”

Councilwoman Jenny Spencer, in her questioning of Edmonds’ proposal, was skeptical about how DigitalC could not only keep rates so low, but how they could roll out service in the 18-month timeline post-legislation. Along with how to keep DigitalC profitable with such rates so attractive.

“That technology that seems to have been a very aggressive timeline,” she said. “Eighteen months, talking about getting those 120 towers in place.”

“A lot of these towers are already in place,” Edmonds said. “All we are doing is adding our radios to the existing towers.”

“And then so yeah, I have no idea if the 18 months feasible or not,” Spencer said, segueing into DigitalC’s profitability. “That’s a four year process, and you would need to enroll 23,000 households in order to have a stabilized revenue model.”

Polensek’s worry was mostly whether or not the $20 million allocated from ARPA funds would be wholly spent on DigitalC’s promised service, not on added franchise fees—say, with Spectrum—or what penalties could arise due to unforeseen service issues.

“I would make that request [to the Law Department], because $20 million is a lot,” Polensek said, referring to the franchise clarification. As for how DigitalC would keep rates low during inflation, or how many “outside entities” they’ve worked with in the past, Polensek was stark: “I’m going to need some clarification.”

The Utilities Board will revisit Edmonds’ pitch in an early July meeting.

As DigitalC was sold to council Thursday, its mission was born out of a call to action back in 2015 to mend Cleveland’s internet desert. Come 2017, when Edmonds was working as a public service fellow at the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, DigitalC became a sort of test subject for the Authority’s indoor WiFi expansion.

In the years after, organizations like Dollar Bank, MetroHealth and CMSD were added to the DigitalC resumé, along with thousands of families linked to broadband in Buckeye-Shaker, Glenville and Clark-Fulton. Edmonds claimed that DigitalC was able to achieve a “minimum of 100 Mbps” at CMHA’s Phoenix Village, a benchmark he’d like to see normalized over the years of rollout.

If council does pass the legislation, Edmonds said DigitalC would focus on five to six Cleveland wards at a time, a somewhat swift offering schedule aided by DigitalC’s adoption of about 30 pre-existing telecommunications towers around Northeast Ohio.

The service could begin a rollout by the end of this year if funding is approved.

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