About NLWI

A quorum of North Lauderdale Water Association (NLWA) members voted unanimously at our 2020 annual meeting to add broadband to our portfolio of utility services and to amend our bylaws and articles of incorporation accordingly.  The board had already been researching fixed wireless for 18 months before the COVID-19 outbreak, and the subsequent quarantine accelerated these plans by illustrating how desperately many of our rural members needed high-speed internet connections for distance learning, telehealth, and telework.  Since our member population is spread at low-density across more than 100 square miles, and considering we already have the helpful assets of four elevated water tanks, the most cost-effective and rapidly-deployable solution to choose was wireless.  With the help of some federal CARESact grant money competitively awarded by the state as a matching grant, NLWA created North Lauderdale Wireless Internet (NLWI) on 28 July 2020 and commenced a project to create 120 square miles of coverage by the end of the year.  Like NLWA, NLWI is a nonprofit operation, but is designed to be financially independent and pay its own way.  Any profit margin it earns will be used to expand and improve service.