On Friday, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced that they would start a $6.9 grant program to initiate a broadband initiative in several U.S. states. The program is in its pilot stage and, for the moment, the foundation will develop the program in Arkansas, California, Kansas, Massachusetts, New York, Texas and Virginia. The program will cover the costs for internet subscription, maintenance and new computers.

The money will go to a couple of organizations. An amount of $6.1 million will go to the Connected Nations NGO, a group that lobbies for the extending of broadband Internet coverage. The rest of $850.000 will be awarded to American Library Association's Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP). OITP will coordinate state libraries’ strategies in implementing and maintenance of broadband connections, as well as it will do researches in order to develop a guideline that other libraries should follow as to implement high-speed internet in their institutions.

The project initiated by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is welcomed, as libraries are considered to be a free internet café by most students that have no internet access. Until today, most libraries addressed this issue by limiting the time during which a user has access to internet, as 45.7% of them are using a 60-minute limit and 35.2% are using a 30-minute limit.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation had initiated previous projects to support state libraries in the last few years. The foundation has invested about $325 million in training programs and computers in libraries across the country.