How did stakeholders respond to school closings and the digital divide -- and what lessons can be learned from those efforts to close the digital divide going forward? This report highlights case studies at the state, city, and school district level and concludes that there are three key steps in the still unfinished endeavor of closing the K–12 digital divide during the pandemic.
Alabama’s Black Belt region is markedly behind the rest of the state when it comes to internet access. Of the 24 Black Belt counties to be part of the region, all except two are below the statewide average of 86 percent coverage, and half are below 50 percent. Further, Choctaw and Perry counties zero percent coverage of 100+ mbps internet (Greene County has a negligible 0.02 percent coverage).
The new fervor for tech antitrust has so far overlooked an equally obvious target: US broadband providers. “If you want to talk about a history of using gatekeeper power to harm competitors, there are few better examples,” says Benton Senior Fellow and Public Advocate Gigi Sohn. Sohn and other critics of the four companies that dominate US broadband—Verizon, Comcast, Charter Communications, and AT&T—argue that antitrust intervention has been needed for years to lower prices and widen internet access.
The giant elephant in this virtual room: the completely indefensible proposal to create a government-sponsored wholesale wireless network. For the last few years this “idea” has been floated, rejected, floated, rejected, and just recently floated again. Now, it seems to be under consideration once again by some at the highest levels of our government.
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