Public housing Wi-Fi case study: how ETTE led the Team Wi-Fi coalition from a self-funded 90-day pilot at Potomac Gardens to a city-funded, five-site residential Wi-Fi program for DCHA and DHS properties in Washington, DC.
The 90-day Wi-Fi pilot that became essential infrastructure
In the spring of 2020, distance learning exposed how many DC public housing residents had no usable internet at home. ETTE organized a coalition of five DC-area small businesses, funded a 90-day proof of concept at Potomac Gardens with no cost to the city, and used the results to win public funding. Five years on, the program delivers near-gigabit Wi-Fi to 883 devices across five DC Housing Authority and Department of Human Services properties, free to residents. Every figure on this page comes from the program’s five-year performance analysis and the site reports behind it.
From self-funded pilot to city-funded program
ETTE led as system integrator: design the network, prove demand with the coalition’s own money, hand the city hard data, then build and operate the expanded portfolio.
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Form the coalitionFive DC-area small businesses covering ISP backbone, installation, scheduling, and community engagement, with ETTE as system integrator and lead
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Fund the proofA 90-day pilot at Potomac Gardens under a signed agreement with DCHA, delivered at no cost to the housing authority or the District
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Measure demandBy November 2020: 383.8 GB transferred and 40 active users, up 57% and 29% respectively in a single month, on outdoor coverage alone
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Win public fundingDC’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer funded a five-site expansion in April 2021, covering installation, monitoring, and ongoing support
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Operate and reportRound-the-clock monitoring on Ubiquiti UniFi infrastructure, with anonymized site-level performance reporting to program supervisors
Built for residents the broadband market had left behind
When DC Public Schools moved online in 2020, upwards of 30% of children in the District lacked the connectivity virtual classrooms required. The subsidized option, 25/3 Mbps over shared cable, could lose a third to two-thirds of its capacity to a single Microsoft Teams classroom session. A household with two students had no workable choice at all. The coalition’s answer was a 1 Gbps symmetric dedicated backbone with managed Wi-Fi on each property, built and run by local small businesses.
The Team Wi-Fi coalition
ETTE served as system integrator and lead, alongside NewConnect LLC (fixed wireless ISP), Bailey Systems LLC (physical installation), Results One LLC (scheduling and reporting), and the Center for Human Capital Innovation (community engagement and workforce development). All five are DC-area small businesses.
A pilot designed to be judged
The proof of concept ran under a formal memorandum of agreement and license with DCHA, on the coalition’s own budget, with usage measured and reported monthly. When the November 2020 numbers showed demand growing by double digits month over month, ETTE put the case for expansion in writing to DCHA’s Executive Director. The city’s technology office was already watching, and formalized funding the following April.
Program timeline
What five years of utilization data showed
The program’s network collects anonymized, aggregate utilization metrics only; no personally identifiable information is gathered. That aggregate record answers the question every funder asks: was the demand real?
No sites have been added since late 2022, yet annual bandwidth rose from roughly 95 TB in 2023 to 215 TB in 2024 to 383 TB in the most recent reporting year. Growth of that kind can’t be attributed to new construction. It reflects residents adopting telehealth, remote learning, streaming, and remote work on a network that could carry them.
Greenleaf Senior Center carries 157.1 TB a year, 41% of all portfolio bandwidth, across 358 devices. That is nearly double the traffic of Potomac Gardens, the program’s original pilot site, and it comes from senior housing, the demographic most often assumed to be offline.
Greenleaf’s monthly traffic grew to 13.8 times its early-2023 level while routine speed tests sustained 956 Mbps download and 2 ms latency. Four of the five sites deliver near-gigabit speeds with 2–3 ms latency, meeting or exceeding typical residential broadband standards.
School-issued Chromebooks, free smartphones, and tablets distributed through public programs sat underused without a connection to run on. Replacing the pilot’s voucher-based onboarding with open access removed the last barrier, and connected devices grew from about 50 to 883.
Providing free high-speed internet access at public housing properties is a way to ensure DC’s more vulnerable residents have the same access as their more affluent neighbors, helping reduce gaps in education, employment, and everyday knowledge.
— DCHA Executive Director · mayor.dc.gov, May 2022Where the program stands after five years
Three DCHA public housing properties and two DHS transitional housing properties, spanning Wards 1, 6, and 8, with ETTE operating the network under city funding since 2021.
From an estimated 4.6 TB in the pilot year, annualized from the documented November 2020 report, to a measured 383 TB in April 2025 through March 2026.
An estimated 297 of 581 household units across the three public housing properties, a 51% participation rate on an opt-in, free service.
Portfolio monthly bandwidth rose from 5.47 TB in early 2023 to 31.9 TB in the latest year, a 5.8× increase, led by the senior center at 13.8×.
Four of five sites deliver near-gigabit download and upload speeds with 2–3 ms latency, maintained through five years of compounding usage growth.
The pilot’s agreement and license frameworks, and its measure-then-fund model, now serve program supervisors as the template for evaluating expansion to additional public and transitional housing sites.
The coalition and the agencies behind it
The program works because each party held a role it was built for: small businesses that could move fast, agencies that owned the properties, and a city funder that converted proof into policy.
Designed and deployed the network at all five sites, operates it around the clock on Ubiquiti UniFi management infrastructure, and produces the site-level and multi-year performance reporting program supervisors use for funding decisions. ETTE also made the December 2020 written case to DCHA that helped turn a pilot into a funded program.
NewConnect LLC provided the fixed wireless ISP backbone, Bailey Systems LLC handled physical installation on rooftops and light poles, Results One LLC ran scheduling and reporting, and the Center for Human Capital Innovation led community engagement and workforce development with residents.
The DC Housing Authority authorized the original pilot and licensed the coalition’s equipment on its property, then expanded to three public housing sites. The Department of Human Services brought two transitional housing properties into the portfolio. The two agencies jointly supervise the program today.
Watched the self-funded pilot’s numbers, then converted the demonstration into sustained public investment in April 2021 with a statement of work covering all five sites. OCTO has verified and accepted the program’s ongoing operations monthly ever since.
If you have a connectivity gap and no obvious way to fund it
Special projects that start small and earn their scale
This program followed a pattern ETTE applies beyond Wi-Fi: prove the idea at pilot scale, measure honestly, and let the data make the funding case. Agencies, nonprofits, and mission-driven organizations with residents, members, or communities to connect can start with a scoped pilot rather than a leap. ETTE designs, builds, and operates managed networks through its Managed IT & On-Site Support and Proactive Monitoring practices, and stays accountable to the numbers year after year.
Five years in, the reporting cadence that won the original funding is still running. That is the part most infrastructure projects skip.