Internet For All:
Backstory
New York City has an access problem — and it’s not an accident.
Internet access in this city tracks race and class with brutal precision. Nearly 1 in 4 Bronx households lack broadband, almost double Manhattan’s rate. When federal subsidies ended in 2025, 44% of Bronx households lost their connection overnight.
This isn’t just about streaming or scrolling. It’s about working class New Yorkers accessing basic necessities like applying for jobs, filling out college applications, attending classes, scheduling doctor’s appointments, and applying for benefits. Digital exclusion deepens existing inequality.
Mapping inequality: households without internet
Private ISPs have failed New Yorkers over and over
Big ISPs like Verizon, Spectrum, and Optimum don’t have to compete. They cut exclusive deals with landlords, block competing providers, and offer “customer service” that has become a citywide punchline. Their message is clear: they set the prices and you have no choice but to pay.
The 2020 Internet Master Plan was supposed to change this.
The City had allocated $157 million, and vetted contractors. As the plan reached the early stages of deployment, the Adams administration killed it. Instead, Adams replaced it with Big Apple Connect, a program that hands $38 million a year to the very same ISPs causing this crisis. Worse, Big Apple Connect secretly connected NYCHA security cameras to NYPD”s surveillance system without telling residents, NYCHA, or City Council.
We subsidize corporate monopolies, our bills continue to rise and we get surveilled in return.
Internet for All is the alternative: public infrastructure, real accountability, and internet that serves New Yorkers choice – not the other way around.
But there’s a better model already working in New York.
In 2025, HPD and the New York Public Library started Neighborhood Internet – a program bringing free internet to 35 affordable housing buildings in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan, serving 2,200 households. Instead of paying ISPs like Spectrum and Optimum, the city funds infrastructure directly and NYPL operates the network. While smaller than Big Apple Connect, it demonstrates what’s possible when public institutions, not corporations control infrastructure. And HPD now requires all new affordable housing developments receiving city financing to include free internet for residents – thousands of units have been connected over the last five years.
Across New York State, other cities and towns are taking control of their internet. Jamestown secured $29.9million in state funding to build a city-owned open-access fiber network that will serve all 14,447 homes. The city will own the infrastructure while multiple providers compete to offer service at rates well below what ISPs charge. Schoharie County is building 298 miles of publicly-owned fiber to reach its most rural areas and Orleans County is expanding wireless infrastructure to deliver 100 Mbps symmetrical speeds to 11,000 locations. These networks are funded through New York’s ConnectAll program – the same state funding New York City is eligible for!
New Yorkers across all boroughs have a right to transparent & affordable pricing, more ISP options, and faster internet speeds. The Internet for All campaign seeks to deliver on this promise.
New York City can join municipalities across the country that are taking control of this essential utility. The infrastructure is here. The successful models exist. The only question is whether we have the political will to make internet access a right, not a privilege.
