Smart Cities Connect Opens With Calls for Digital Equity
The eighth annual Smart Cities Connect Conference & Expo opened with a panel discussion around digital equity and the need for all communities to expand access to broadband as they emerge from the COVID-19 crisis. Shutterstock
Broadband connectivity and digital equity have been themes and goals echoed among smart city leaders for years with varying degrees of fulfillment but a new sense of urgency is taking over the conversation.
“The time is now,” Colman Keane, broadband executive director in Fort Collins, Colo., told his fellow panelists and the smart cities community Tuesday morning during one of the opening sessions of the Smart Cities Connect Conference and Expo.