The Federal Communications Commission FCC announced that it will allocate more than 2.8 million dollars in a new round of financing, through the Emergency Connectivity Fund ECF Program, for its acronym in English), aimed at schools and libraries to ensure access to digital services for students across the country.
This is a “financing commitment” that arises as a result of the applications submitted to the third order window and with which the State seeks to benefit some 7,000 students from all over the country, by reaching 15 schools with connectivity and devices, five libraries and a consortium, and that will be added to the 17 million people of educational age that have already been reached by this initiative.
“With today’s funding round, we continue our progress to give students the online access they need to connect with their teachers and keep up with schoolwork,” said Yesica Rosenworcel, FCC President. “This program is an important part of our ongoing work to close the homework gap.”
It should be remembered that this Emergency Connectivity Program was launched two years ago and that, up to now, it involved three instances of requests for support that resulted in the disbursement of more than 6,600 million dollars: 4,140 million dollars approved at the first opportunity , 883 million in the second and 1,650 million in the third “order window”.
The balance shows that, with this initiative that was approved within the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, the government of this country benefited 10,000 schools, 1,000 libraries and 100 consortia, in addition to having provided almost 13 million connected devices and more eight million broadband connections to its students.
All in all, this program was born from the obvious need to be able to have quality distance education due to the health emergency imposed by the covid-19 pandemic and for which 7,171 million dollars were made available to close the local digital gap. .
Thus, this ECF guarantees to cover the “reasonable costs” of devices, equipment and links: laptops and tablets; Wi-Fi hotspots; modems; routers; and purchases of broadband connectivity for off-campus use by students, school staff, and library patrons.