Akron, Ohio will be the first community to receive a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for the deployment of a free public Wi-Fi network that covers 12 square miles, including downtown. The Knight Foundation pledged $25 million to set up the Knight Center for Digital Excellence whose goal is to fund community broadband networks, collect and share international best practices online with communities. According to the press release, “the center will be run by OneCommunity, a nonprofit based in Cleveland that has worked since 2003 to build a high-speed fiber-optic network between public and nonprofit institutions in Northeast Ohio.The foundation granted $4.5 million to OneCommunity to launch the new center and has pledged an additional $10.5 million to cover operational costs for five years. Another $10 million will go to grants for broadband access projects in 26 Knight communities. Those are the communities, including Akron, where the Knight brothers once owned newspapers.”

Akron will be the national center’s headquarters and will receive a $625,000 grant. Akron’s downtown wireless network will cost $2.2 million to build and will use OneCommunity’s regional fiber-optic network as its backhaul. The other communities are Aberdeen, Biloxi, Boulder, Bradenton, Charlotte, Columbia, Columbus, Detroit, Duluth, Fort Wayne, Gary, Grand Forks, Lexington, Long Beach, Macon, Miami, Milledgeville, Myrtle Beach, Palm Beach, Philadelphia, San Jose, St. Paul, State College, Tallahassee, Wichita.

For more information:

Knight Foundation press release [1]