[Chapter-delegates] Rent the Internet

[Glenn McKnight]

Interesting article from Benton. Org
https://www.benton.
org/blog/rent-internet?utm_campaign=Newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sendgrid

Rent the InternetIn Somerset County Pennsylvania’s libraries, residents
checkout more than books

[image: Reid Sharkey]
        Sharkey

The Mary S. Biesecker Public Library in Somerset County, Pennsylvania,
created the Library Internet Checkout Program
<https://www.maryslibrary.com/?page_id=7965> in partnership with T-Mobile,
allowing residents to “checkout” home internet service like they would a
book. For $35 per month, patrons get access to T-Mobile home internet
service with unlimited data, the T-Mobile “gateway” device (a combination
modem and wireless router), and orientation from the library to ensure the
service works at the patron’s home.1 The program provides home internet
access to over 1,500 households in Somerset County (pop. 72,000) for whom
broadband access, affordability, or both may have been a hurdle in the
past.

Like most rural communities in the country, Somerset County feels the
digital divide on multiple fronts. This small, rural county sits on the
Maryland border in the northern Appalachian mountains. Broadband
infrastructure deployment is challenging and expensive in the region due to
rocky terrain, dense forest, and low population density. Data from the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) finds
<https://broadbandmap.fcc.gov/area-summary/fixed?version=dec2025&geoid=42111&type=county&zoom=7.87&vlon=-78.977309&vlat=39.898325&br=r&speed=100_20&tech=1_2_3_6_7>
that
over 7,000 locations in the county lack access to fixed broadband service.
Broadband affordability is another barrier that residents in Somerset
County face in getting online. When the FCC’s Affordable Connectivity
Program ran out of funding in 2024, 3,759
<https://www.usac.org/about/affordable-connectivity-program/acp-enrollment-and-claims-tracker/>
households
in Somerset County lost the $30-per-month broadband benefit, forcing
families to make difficult budgeting decisions.

[image: Library Internet Checkout Program]
How the Program Started and Grew

In 2019, Morgan Simmons, the IT & Facility Coordinator at Mary S. Biesecker
Public Library, took a sales call from T-Mobile that planted the seed for
what would become the Internet Checkout Program. . T-Mobile was seeking new
government customers during its 5G network rollout and offered the library
a free trial of its new wireless home internet offering. The library
received 10 activated gateways for 3 months. That trial period proved so
popular that it blossomed into the Internet Checkout Program, which now
offers a solution to many of the unconnected households in Somerset County.

The program is open to anyone with a library card; however, service quality
and availability vary throughout the county. Customers sign up for an
orientation session directly on the library website, after which program
staff determine whether T-Mobile service is available at the applicant’s
household. There are no upfront costs for customers, and a 24-hour free
trial period allows customers to confirm that the service is satisfactory
at their household. Gateways and, by extension, internet services are
checked out on a month-to-month basis, allowing customers to cancel their
service at any time.

The program has proved to be a massive success. Started at just two
libraries—Mary S. Biesecker and the Somerset County Library’s main
branch—the program has since expanded to all county libraries and attracts
around 40 new customers each month.
With Growth, Comes Choices for Somerset County Libraries

The model that Simmons and his library colleagues created is
self-sustaining. The partnership with T-Mobile allows the gateway, internet
service, and administrative costs to be covered by the $35 per month rental
fee. The county does not need to use any public funds to support the
program’s activities or staff. In fact, the program has grown to the point
of producing enough revenue to support a full-time position at the library
to oversee its operation and growth. With that growth, Simmons and his
colleagues have been exploring opportunities. The library has been
contacted by Mission Telecom <https://missiontelecom.org/>—a nonprofit that
provides affordable broadband to under-resourced communities, including
libraries—to drastically reduce subscription costs. This would require
customers to acquire their own routers, creating an upfront cost that does
not currently exist.

The Internet Checkout Program sits at the intersection of three main parts
of the digital divide: broadband affordability, access, and digital skills.
Simmons thinks the program's popularity stems from its solution for
broadband access gaps in the county, and patrons have found that the
service can work outside the area for which it is officially marketed.
Additionally, patrons benefit from the program’s low prices and the
library’s supplemental digital navigation services. The Somerset County
Library has a team of digital navigators, and Simmons believes the checkout
program has directed some customers to use them. The checkout program is
intentionally kept separate from the digital navigation services to prevent
the line between the two from blurring. When a customer of the checkout
program calls the support phone number with a digital skills question,
library staff is trained to direct the customer to the digital navigation
service either informally or through a referral.

The Mary S. Biesecker Public Library and Somerset County Public Library
have created one of the premier internet lending programs in the country.
Simmons believes the library's model could be replicated elsewhere,
particularly in rural areas that lack robust broadband infrastructure or
where affordability is a barrier to broadband adoption.

*Notes:*

   1.  T-Mobile’s mass market offering for home internet starts at $55 per
   month before promotions.

------------------------------

*Reid Sharkey <https://www.benton.org/benton-staffboard/reid-sharkey> is
a Community Broadband Specialist & Research Associate at the Benton
Institute for Broadband & Society. He completed a year of Americorps
service in 2023 which was his introduction to working in broadband and
digital equity policy. Sharkey first worked with the Benton Institute
during his service term. He assisted in administering the Benton
Institute's Accelerate community engagement and broadband infrastructure
planning program in Tennessee, where he was serving as an American
Connection Corps Fellow at the Tennessee Department of Economic and
Community Development. Reid received a Masters of Public Policy from George
Mason University in 2022.*
Glenn McKnight, MA
Virtual School of Internet Governance
Chief Information Officer
www.virtualsig.org
*YOUR SOURCE FOR INTERNET GOVERNANCE EDUCATION *
*Mobile  437-237-4655*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://elists.isoc.org/pipermail/chapter-delegates/attachments/20260602/ad4d9f93/attachment-0001.htm>