PHILADELPHIA -- Comcast today announced a pilot program with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) ConnectHome initiative to attack the digital divide for public housing residents. Eligibility for Internet Essentials, Comcast's acclaimed, high-speed Internet adoption program, will be immediately extended to public housing residents in Miami-Dade County and the cities of Nashville, Philadelphia, and Seattle. This is the eighth time in five years Comcast has expanded eligibility for Internet Essentials.

Also today, Comcast announced its latest Internet Essentials milestones. In less than five years, the program has now connected more than 600,000 low-income families, benefitting more than 2.4 million Americans, to the Internet at home. In fact, 2015 was the program's single most successful year ever, with a 30 percent increase in enrollments over 2014.

Comcast Corporation Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer David L. Cohen and HUD Secretary Julián Castro made today's announcements alongside Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos A. Giménez and City of Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado at Rainbow Village, a public housing development in Miami, Florida. At the event, Comcast technicians were on hand to install Internet service on the spot. Comcast also provided a free laptop computer and six months' worth of complimentary Internet Essentials Internet service to every Rainbow Village household. In addition, the company donated 15 new computers to the Rainbow Village computer lab where digital literacy training sessions take place after school and where students can do homework and adults can get online.

Between 2009 and 2014, broadband service providers spent over $422 billion on capital investments, and three in four American households now use broadband at home. Despite this significant progress, one in four American households still don't access the Internet at home, particularly lower-income families with children. While nearly two-thirds of America's lowest-income households own a computer, less than half have a home Internet subscription. HUD’s ConnectHome initiative strives to ensure that students can access the same level of high-speed Internet at home that they possess in their classrooms.

Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK)