Joshua Edmonds, CEO of DigitalC, will ask Cleveland City Council members to look at what his nonprofit organization has achieved in its efforts to bring inexpensive, high-speed internet service to residents, even as members ask why it fell short in a key metric that determines how much the city pays for the work.
Edmonds will face Council’s Utilities Committee today at 10 a.m. for an update on the nonprofit’s progress under a $20 million contract approved in 2023. He told Signal Cleveland that in his presentation he will acknowledge that DigitalC has signed up about 2,900 households for service thus far, not the 3,500 called for in the first year of the four-year, performance-based contract with the city.
Failing to meet that goal could cost DigitalC $1.75 million. The contract states: “If the goal number in a given year is not reached, then the payment for that given year is not made and cannot be retroactively provided.”
In an interview on Tuesday, Edmonds emphasized the benchmarks that he said DigitalC has exceeded:
• Building a network that already can reach more than 75,000 homes. “In telecom, what we just did in a year is unheard of,” he said. “This is the equivalent of a team winning a Super Bowl their first [season].”
• Providing “digital literacy training” and other services to more than 7,600 residents. Under the contract, DigitalC would be reimbursed $2 million for that work.
“I’m proud,” Edmonds said. “When this contract was signed, I know there was a lot of skepticism. I know that. But now that I look at the numbers, now that I can look at the feedback that our customers have been able to provide us, I’m going in tomorrow with a sense of pride.”
That pride, Edmonds said, comes from the organization taking on an unprecedented challenge — bringing state-of-the-art internet access to an entire city as a nonprofit — and contending with unforeseeable challenges like one-third of people who sign up not being home for their installation appointments and the damage caused by the August tornadoes.
Mayor Justin Bibb’s administration selected DigitalC over larger, for-profit internet providers in 2023. Council members initially balked at the choice — the organization had a history of falling short of its promises — but later approved the contract that ties payments to progress.
The potential total value of the contract was $20 million if DigitalC hit all the yearly goals on the way to servicing 23,500 households and training 50,000 residents in four years. The city set aside money from federal COVID-19 stimulus money to cover it.
Council Member Brian Kazy, who chairs the Utilities Committee, said he’s “hoping to hear that they’ve met all their goals and that they’ll be receiving the appropriations that they were supposed to earn.”
