The FCC’s Communications Equity and Diversity Council (CEDC) is hosting this roundtable. The goal of the roundtable is to convene key stakeholders across community organizations, internet service providers (ISPs), federal agencies with emergency broadband funding, and state agencies to assess lessons learned concerning programs that provided broadband connectivity to opportunity communities during the pandemic. The half-day virtual workshop will provide a platform to hear from experts from a range of backgrounds and a diverse set of stakeholders about efforts to promote digital equity, broadband adoption, and digital skills training for opportunity communities.

Two panel discussions are planned for the roundtable. Panel 1, Affordability, Availability and Deployment, will help identify successful strategies various organizations and entities implemented to promote deployment of affordable and accessible broadband service during the pandemic, and engage about measures that worked well and the best practices going forward to address challenges in the event of a future pandemic or health emergency. This panel is scheduled for 10:20 am – 11:30 am DST. Panel 2, Adoption and Digital Readiness, will help identify programs initiated during the pandemic to address adoption and digital readiness, and the opportunities that exist to scale successful programs, while funding them sufficiently to be effective. This panel is scheduled for 12:00 noon – 1:15 pm.

The detailed agenda for the “Lessons Learned from the Pandemic” roundtable discussion will be released prior to the event. The public may view the roundtable discussion via live feed from the FCC’s web page at www.fcc.gov/live and on the FCC’s YouTube channel. The public may also follow the event on Twitter@fcc or via the Commission’s Facebook page. Members of the public may submit questions during the roundtable discussions to livequestions@fcc.gov.

Open captioning will be provided for this event. Other reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities are available upon request. Requests for such accommodations should be submitted via e-mail to fcc504@fcc.gov or by calling the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau at (202) 418-0530 (voice). Such requests should include a detailed description of the accommodation needed. In addition, please include a way for the FCC to contact the requester if more information is needed to fill the request. Please allow at least five days’ advance notice for accommodation requests; last minute requests will be accepted but may not be possible to accommodate.

Members of the public may submit written comments to the CEDC using the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System, ECFS, at www.fcc.gov/ecfs. Any comments should be filed in GN Docket No. 17-208.

Related Materials

• Meeting Announcement
• CEDC Home Page