Cleveland Lost Josh Edmonds Once. Now the Country Calls Him a Visionary.

Two years ago this week, Josh Edmonds sat at my table and told me something he said he didn’t usually say in public.

“I was angry to leave Cleveland,” he said. “I felt like Cleveland wasn’t willing to give me an opportunity to showcase who I was, and Detroit was willing to do that.”

Hold that sentence. It’s the whole story.

Detroit gave a young brother from Painesville the room. He became the first municipal director of digital inclusion in the country. He helped pull tens of millions of dollars into digital equity, and he testified before Congress. Then he came home to run DigitalC, the nonprofit internet provider that most people in this town had already written off.

He had offers in Detroit and San Francisco. He took the one where he could fail. “Those other companies, I wasn’t going to fail there. They were so well resourced,” he told me. “I could fail at DigitalC. That was why I did it.”

This August, the Broadband Communities Summit in Houston named DigitalC its Broadband Provider of the Year. DigitalC also took the Customer Experience Award, and Edmonds took the Broadband Visionary Award. Black Vanguard Media put the headline right: From Doubt to National Recognition.

So let me ask the question Cleveland keeps dodging. How close did we come to losing him again?

The beating

Closer than most people know. Edmonds told me his first day on the job was in front of City Hall, answering for a proposal he didn’t write, with a leadership team he didn’t hire. Longtime supporters pulled him aside. “Y’all aren’t gonna get that grant.” “I don’t know why you came back.”

In June 2023, Council’s Utilities Committee froze the $20 million contract. Chairman Brian Kazy said, “You have these monster goals, but you only have 2,000 subscribers.” Ward 13 Councilman Kris Harsh called DigitalC’s record “a very checkered history of overpromising and incredibly under delivering.”

Edmonds owned it. “I understand our ‘checkered’ past,” he said. “I take it as my responsibility to not only clean that up.”

He told me what it cost him. “I’ve never been publicly punched in my life,” he said. “By the end of it I’m slumped over, because they were hitting me the entire time for three hours.”

I watched those hearings. I watch Council like a soap opera. Folks who worked for the big carriers were calling me, laughing, sure the young brother would fold. He didn’t.

Then came 2024. DigitalC signed about 2,900 households against a 3,500 goal, and Council held back roughly $1 million. That was fair. Public money comes with public benchmarks. Kazy said it himself: “We also believe that we need you to succeed.”

The answer

Edmonds answered the only way that counts. He delivered. Council kept asking whether his wireless signal could get through Cleveland’s tree canopy. So he named the service Canopy. “We used that same brick that you threw at us to make the foundation for this brand,” he told me.

“We used that same brick that you threw at us to make the foundation for this brand.”Josh Edmonds, CEO, DigitalC

Canopy costs $18 a month, with 100 megabits down and 100 up, and the price is locked. Families with a child in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District pay nothing. The crews are local and the call center is local, and the build started on the East Side, where the big carriers never hurry.

In 2025, DigitalC reported 4,862 new household subscriptions against a goal of 4,700, and Council released the money in May. DigitalC now reports more than 12,500 connected households and more than 30,000 residents served. By its count, the citywide build was done in under 18 months. And Rocket Community Fund just put $3.5 million behind taking the Cleveland model to Detroit.

Read that again. Detroit is buying what Cleveland built. It was Detroit that gave him his first shot, too.

The lesson is about us

Here’s the pattern, and every grown person in this city has watched it. We find somebody with real talent, usually young and usually Black. We hand them the hardest job in the building and the smallest margin for error. Then we beat them in public until they pack up. They go somewhere else, and that city makes them famous. Years later we read about them and wonder why Cleveland never has anybody.

Edmonds told me straight out: Cleveland lost him once already. What he did next shows what the city nearly gave away a second time.

I’m not saying hand him the keys. Council should keep asking hard questions. Harsh is still pressing on how DigitalC proves the people it counts are actually using the service, and that’s a fair question. The contract’s finish line is 23,500 newly connected households, and DigitalC still has ground to cover. Accountability is the job.

But there’s a difference between holding somebody accountable and running them out of town. Accountability says: here’s the benchmark, meet it, and we’ll back you when you do. Running somebody out says: we expected you to fail, and we’ll make sure the room remembers every miss. Cleveland has been way too good at the second one.

Consumer Reports puts the median broadband bill at $89 a month. Every carrier charging that is watching whether this city grows its own $18 network or starves it. Edmonds told me their choice is to “kill us as fast as they possibly can” or adjust.

Our choice is simpler. When we get great talent back, we keep it.

Josh Edmonds came home to deliver a championship. The country just told us he did. Cleveland ought to be the loudest one saying it.

Kenn Dowell is the founder and publisher of RealPower.TV and CEO of Strategic Resources Consulting. Join RealPower.TV to get every edition.