Started in February 2021, when many children lacked reliable access to their online classrooms, the challenge sought "the boldest, most revolutionary proposals" to solve a devastating problem made worse by the pandemic.
Two years later, with access to the Internet still eluding many of the state's communities and families, it's clear the $1 million California Digital Divide Innovation Challenge was a bust.
But it was more than just a failure, the four contestants who took part said. It was a devastating farce.
In the end, those who entered never stood a chance of winning even as they spent endless hours and significant financial resources to meet education officials' demands to prove the technology would be fast, affordable and ready for statewide deployment in a year.
At a time when public officials are increasingly touting the power of public-private partnerships to solve urgent civic problems, the story of the Innovation Challenge is a cautionary tale. It left contestants frustrated and disillusioned by bureaucratic delays, bad communication and what appeared to be a focus on public relations rather than public good.
Bay Area small business owner Odion Edohomon didn't know the frustration to come when he accepted the challenge in summer 2021. He wanted to help. And he wanted to win.
Over the course of a year, his company, Dalet Access Labs, spent more than $700,000 to prove his solution would work. Using a low-latency mesh network, he managed to provide a small community in rural Humboldt County with the first reliable Internet access it ever had. The students, parents and education officials in the area — as well as state officials — were thrilled.
But Edohomon didn't win, despite state schools chief Tony Thurmond's office promoting his achievements at a ribbon cutting in Fairhaven and in a statewide news release.
In fact, none of the handful of competitors took home the prize. Now, a Chronicle investigation has found that state officials misled contestants about the contest, then proceeded to ignore their urgent emails and calls for months at a time. State officials said they and the prize's funders, who later judged the competition, hoped someone, maybe at academic heavyweights like MIT or CalTech, was sitting on an invention that would provide universal, fast and very cheap Internet access — within a year's time.
They were hoping for a miracle. What they got instead, and deemed not good enough, were practical solutions like Edohomon's.
And all the while, about 20 percent of the state's most disadvantaged students lacked broadband access at home, according to nonpartisan think tank Public Policy Institute of California, and struggled to access the schooling the state was constitutionally required to provide.
"It wasted precious resources and time," said Nishal Mohan, one of the entrants and founder of San Diego-based Mohuman, which helps to provide digital access in low-income communities. "Again, the people lose."
IN THE DARK
From the outset, the contest had unrealistic goals, The Chronicle found. The contest's funders didn't want entries using existing technology, state officials said. Those funders, including Mickelson Philanthropies and 20MM Foundation, General Motors, Genentech and PG&E, sought a miracle moonshot: an as-yet-unknown technology that would provide fast Internet access for less than $15 per month for every household in the state and ready to roll out in a year's time.
All four contest entrants, however, said they never knew that.
Only recently did state officials acknowledge the folly of the contest's hopes.
"We see that it was too big of a lift," said Mary Nicely, Thurmond's chief deputy, adding that the pandemic had created a sense of urgency to come up with a solution. "We were pretty much trying to figure out anything."
Representatives of the funders identified by state officials declined to comment on the record.
Yet despite its lofty aims, the state accepted the applications from Edohomon and the other competitors, which included Bay Area-based LB Mobile Telecom Management and the Tulare County Office of Education. All proposed innovative plans using existing technology like cellular service or fiber-optic networks.
For more than 18 months, the applicants were forced to jump through hoops, including, in Dalet Labs' case, traveling hundreds of miles to test its technology with students and report back to the state, then waiting weeks or months at a time for Department of Education officials to respond to them.
The contest funders, who also judged the results, were not involved in the review of applicants nor in the competition process developed by the state. The funders never expected the contestants to test their technology with students or to spend any resources to put the technology in place.
In Edohomon's case, Nicely said she didn't know his company was installing the technology in a community in Humboldt County, although Department of Education officials confirmed they had requested the company test its solution there.
"They went out on a limb to do something," Nicely said. "We had no idea the full extent of what they were doing."
It was Dalet Labs' choice to enter the contest, its choice to spend all that money, she added.
'PUBLICITY STUNT'
State education officials said the Innovation Challenge funders are now looking to use the original $1 million with additional matching funds to create a grant program rather than a contest to help close the digital divide. The four contest competitors would be first in line for what could be a $2 million pot, education officials said. But it is unclear when or how that would happen.
That news did not lessen the frustration caused by the contest, the participants said.
"It feels like a publicity stunt," said Lauren Batinich Vincent, founder and CEO of LB Mobile Telecom and one of the contestants who felt burned. "It hasn't benefited me as a business."
She added that it's been "a huge expense," but didn't specify the amount spent on it.
Vincent's entry included using portable hotspot devices paired with cellular networks. As part of her entry, she tested the solution in Santa Clara, San Mateo and three other California counties and negotiated with top cellular providers to ensure the devices were secure, with school districts distributing them at a cost of $15 per month.
"I knew I had a solution that could work," she said. But, she added, the state didn't respond to her for months on end and then turned her down.
Vincent was notified in her February rejection letter she could apply for a $25,000 digital access grant. She declined.
Those in the public sector who applied also found silence from the state before being rejected. In Tulare County, education officials entered with a plan to use wireless and citizen band technology. Its proposal was already an ongoing program in the county Office of Education, said Bruce Storer, director of information systems for the Office of Education, who was not involved in the initial application. It uses existing and even old technology, but it works, he said.
Mohan also submitted a proposal using an off-the-shelf technology. He wanted to solve the lack of Internet access for those struggling with unpaid bills for broadband services. The idea was to use a pay-as-you-go system, ensuring that students would have high-speed Internet even if their families couldn't pay the bill. The plan would also include a free option with slightly lower speeds that would still allow students access to Zoom and other critical programs.
"We did come up with a solution to balance the cost," Mohan said. "To make it affordable."
STATE ATTENDS RIBBON CUTTING
Edohomon believed he had a good chance of winning after state officials accepted his entry and later sent him to the community of Fairhaven in Humboldt County, some 300 miles away, to test the technology and prove its efficacy. He said he had asked for a Bay Area site, but was told there were none available.
So after meeting with Fairhaven community members, he launched the technology in July 2022, installing a network to provide high-speed broadband service by bouncing fiber optic access off centralized structures.
It was technology, he said, "that can bridge the digital divide and level the playing field."
The service was like a miracle for the community, giving kids and their parents a lifeline to the outside world, said Sean McLaughlin of Access Humboldt, something no one else had been able to do.
The success of the entry was even touted by state education officials, including Nicely, who attended a ribbon-cutting in Fairhaven to celebrate the launch of the technology.
"From the first days of the pandemic, State Superintendent Thurmond made connectivity a top priority so our students could continue their education from home," Nicely said at the October 2022 event. "If not for his statewide leadership to close the digital divide .... and launch the Innovation Challenge, we would not be here today to celebrate the connection of our students and this community to access essential information and services."
Yet after the ribbon-cutting, the state stopped responding to Edohomon's inquiries about the contest, McLaughlin said. That silence, he said, began soon after the November re-election of Thurmond.
"It doesn't feel genuine," McLaughlin said of the state contest.
Despite her comments at the ribbon cutting, Nicely later told The Chronicle that while the Dalet Labs' solution was "great for that community," it would be too expensive to deploy statewide and therefore didn't meet the contest requirements. In addition, she said, it wasn't "revolutionary enough."
Nicely also attributed delays in the competition process and lack of communication at times in the pandemic.
"COVID just got in the way for any of us to get this thing done," she said.
Edehomon disagrees.
Though the contest put his company into debt, his technology remains in use in Fairhaven, where a fiber optic signal bounces off the local fire station and into dozens of homes. At least in that small corner of Humboldt County, the digital divide has disappeared.
"These are real human beings who need access," he said. Thurmond and state education officials "got all the publicity out of it, and then they disappeared."
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