The answer may be a little bit of both.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been quick to say the broadband access gap has been closed by his Broadband for All program, though many including state Sen. George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay disagree with Cuomo’s assessment. The governor is looking to boost broadband access by requiring private companies to provide a $15 rate so that low-income residents can have access to broadband internet.
There are pockets of Chautauqua County lagging behind in internet access according to a fall 2020 survey compiled by the state Education Department. The New York Civil Liberties Union recently filed a Freedom of Information Law request for the survey, which showed that more than 165,000 students in New York state (6%) lacked internet access. In Chautauqua County, 1,058 of the county’s 18,353 students (5.76%) had no access to internet. The same percentage of students had no access to a device to access the internet.
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