Alicia Glen, deputy mayor for housing and economic development, said that Sunset Park is getting an upgrade to its internet access, in an interview with Capital New York:

Capital: It seems that the broadband is one of the key infrastructure pieces that kind of seems out of your control, at this point. Glen: Not entirely. We are actually laying high-speed broadband all throughout the Sunset Park innovation corridor. We’re doing that to stimulate more small businesses going there because it’s so difficult for folks to go.

She told us the same in response to a question at an event at the French Consulate on Dec. 15. Since then, we’ve been working to find out more information about it. Last week, we got a confirmation that this is a moving project but that additional details were not available yet because the project is still being finalized, according to a source within the de Blasio administration.

We also reached out to a couple of major property holders serving the tech industry in Sunset Park.

They didn’t have any additional information on this project, but we were able to confirm that Industry City and Liberty View both have fiber access now.

In April 2014, the administration put out an RFP called “Connect IBZ,” which designated several industrial areas as places where the administration would entertain investing in expanded broadband access. One of those areas, Southwest Brooklyn, would include Sunset Park. That RFP specifically calls for dealing with the “last mile” problem of connecting buildings, a problem we highlighted in some of our previous coverage of New York City’s weakness in fiber access.


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