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Round-Up for the Week of June 15-18, 2026

Public Knowledge, UnidosUS, and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) released a new report on digital equity policy. The Blueprint for Equitable Digital Participation was designed to center the lived experiences of those directly impacted by digital inequities. The Blueprint illuminates the systemic barriers faced by communities most impacted by the digital divide and proposes a variety of effective policy solutions that empower consumers and ensure sustainable federal support.

The following is a breakdown of the report, its development, and its key takeaways.

In Their Words

The Blueprint seeks to confront systemic exclusion by centering and elevating the lived experiences and knowledge of those most impacted by the digital divide. This project also seeks to translate first-hand insights into policy solutions grounded in real-world expertise.

To gain an understanding of the digital divide and its current impact on individuals and families across the United States, seven community-level focus groups in four states—Colorado, Georgia, New Mexico, and Ohio—were conducted between September 2024 and March 2025 in various U.S. communities. Additionally, 107 people participated in a nationwide survey distributed in April 2025.

Focus group discussions included people living with disabilities, people of color, the underemployed, students, rural residents, immigrants, older adults, frontline essential workers, and individuals at the intersection of these identities. The discussions revealed a shared belief in the promise of America: everyone deserves to live with dignity, opportunity, the ability to provide for themselves and their families, and to thrive in their communities. At the same time, many participants also named the persistent struggles they face as a result of failed policy interventions that have created or reinforced barriers to consistent access to affordable, reliable broadband and the digital skills needed to navigate the internet safely in a rapidly changing world. They also described the burden of confronting harmful narratives promoted by powerful, unaccountable special interests that use the notion of “scarcity” to distort political and societal realities.

Focus group participants demonstrate a sophisticated, nuanced understanding of broadband markets, federal programs, and infrastructure gaps, with the precision that comes from necessity and exclusion. Each discussion captured three essential dimensions of this expertise: first-hand knowledge of access barriers that quantitative data and narratives often miss, lived experiences of how federal program disruptions or their total absence impact communities, and community-generated policy solutions that emerge from a genuine understanding of what works and what does not.

A Path Forward for Digital, Economic, and Societal Inclusion

One insight in The Blueprint resonated particularly strongly: Americans believe meaningful change is possible. However, that change must fundamentally shift power away from top-down approaches toward grassroots leadership.

Empowering Communities Through Action and Self-Determination

Moving beyond the scarcity framework that has constrained digital equity efforts requires embracing one that better recognizes the wealth of knowledge, relationships, and soft resources already present within marginalized communities. Strategies include:

• Build Locally Owned Broadband Networks: This vision of community control resonated strongly with focus group participants who identified local ownership as a pathway to both better service and community empowerment. 
• Leverage Power of Community Knowledge: Effective digital skilling initiatives deliver technical knowledge within existing social networks alongside cultural practices rather than treating skills development and training as separate from community life.
• Expand Access Where Communities Already Gather: Participants identified multiple barriers to accessing traditional digital navigator support sites, underscoring the need for more distributed, community-driven access points.
• Integrate Digital Navigation with Existing Community Support Systems: In the absence of dedicated digital access resources, rather than creating parallel or competing support systems, communities have found success by integrating digital navigation services with existing community navigation models already trusted and utilized by residents.
• Mobilize Through Community Coalitions: Digital inclusion coalitions raise awareness of community needs at the local level and can serve as a powerful engine for accelerating and maximizing the effectiveness and deployment of digital inclusion initiatives. 

Demanding Broadband Policy Interventions Across All Levels of Government

Policy shifts between 2024 and 2026 have created both crisis and opportunity. The crisis is immediate: millions of households have been harmed by the cancellation of the Digital Equity Act programs and uncertainty around the future of the non-deployment funds available through the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program. However, this moment also presents an opportunity to rebuild programs with stronger foundations and more sustainable support.

Federal Interventions

• Enhance Connectivity Support for Low-Income Consumers: There is an urgent need for Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to establish a sustainable broadband subsidy for low-income households that:
  • goes well beyond the $9.25 Lifeline benefit,
  • includes mobile, fixed, and voice and internet services,
  • is tiered to account for high-cost rural and Tribal households, and
  • includes mechanisms for regular recalibration to ensure the benefit remains meaningful for the long term.
• Improve Program Outreach and Find Ways to Support Broader Broadband Adoption Efforts: A sustainable broadband subsidy for low-income households should also prioritize enhanced outreach, including cultural and linguistic competencies, that maximize the program’s effectiveness and ensure eligible households are notified.  
• Center Broadband Adoption As a Core Pillar of Universal Service: Building networks alone is not enough to close the digital divide. Congress and the FCC must also invest in ensuring that households can meaningfully access and benefit from the networks that serve them.
• Make Resiliency a Core, Ongoing Outcome of the High-Cost Program: The need for reliable, resilient broadband infrastructure extends beyond initial deployment because networks must remain operational and durable over time.

State Interventions

• Invest in robust, future-proof infrastructure: States have both the authority and the responsibility to leverage BEAD’s flexibility to prioritize robust, high-performance infrastructure.
• Reserve satellite service for ultra-rural areas only: The Vernonburg Group, a consulting organization focused on broadband policy and research, recommended that states use satellites only for ultra-rural areas and redirect savings to broadband adoption programs to support digital skills, device subsidies, and affordability initiatives beyond federal programs.
• Open the market to municipal and cooperative providers: States should repeal laws that prohibit or otherwise restrict municipalities, cooperatives, and public entities from offering broadband services. Such barriers limit competition and perpetuate access gaps, particularly in areas where larger providers claim they have little to no economic incentive to invest.
• Streamline deployment while protecting community interests: While states should consider permitting reforms, they must balance them with other important equities, including environmental protection and local community impacts. 
• Pair affordability mandates with broader digital equity support: Making broadband truly accessible and affordable for low-income communities requires state-specific strategies that reflect local economic conditions, geographic challenges, and community needs, and this must work in tandem with federal funding initiatives.

The Role of Corporate Stewardship in Achieving Universal Service and Adoption

While community mobilization, policy initiatives, and public investment lay a foundation, it is critical that broadband providers and other broadband-enabled industries embrace their role as stewards of infrastructure—both physical and human—in today’s digital economy. Recommendations include:

• Internet Service Providers (ISPs) Should Design and Implement Robust, Low-Cost Programs:  ISPs should implement low-cost offerings that take into account the economic realities facing low-income and working-class households.
• Offer Consistent, Straightforward Pricing Models: Predictable pricing structures, coupled with loyalty incentives, allow households to better plan their technology expenses alongside other household costs while fostering improved customer relationships through greater billing transparency.
• Move Away from Long-Term Contracts: ISPs should minimize lengthy contracts that lock customers into services, particularly in areas with limited provider options due to a lack of competition or unreliable delivery options.
• Simplify the Customer Service Experience: ISPs can build trust and loyalty with consumers by overhauling their customer service systems to reduce wait times, streamline access to support from relevant departments, and empower representatives to resolve issues efficiently.

Scaling Community Solutions Into National Policy

Universal service is a framework based on the belief that essential connectivity is a public good. Effective policymaking requires embracing community assets and knowledge while demanding coordinated government action across all levels. This research demonstrates that transformative change is already emerging at the grassroots level, but federal and state policy must scale these community-driven solutions nationwide.

The digital divide is fundamentally about power and resource distribution. Closing it requires not just building infrastructure but ensuring people can actually benefit from networks through comprehensive adoption support, community ownership models, and policy frameworks that prioritize human dignity over corporate profits. The communities most affected by digital exclusion possess the wisdom to drive solutions—they just need the resources and power to implement them.

To learn more about The Blueprint for Equitable Digital Participation, tune into the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society's webinar with the authors and leaders in the digital equity field on July 1 at 1 pm ET. Register here.

Quick Bits

• NTIA Announces Two New Funding Opportunities to Expand Broadband Connectivity on Tribal Lands
• Trump's shadow AI policy
• Community finance can close the digital divides federal programs keep leaving open
• Starlink hooked rural customers. Then came the price increases.

Weekend Reads

• Americans and AI 2026: Chatbots, Smart Devices and Views on Impact
• Build for Everyone: A Framework for LGBTQ Representation and Safety in Al
• CBRS: America’s Most Widely Utilized Mid-Band Spectrum Asset

ICYMI from Benton

• The FCC Is Asking Whether to End E-Rate. Every School and Library Should Answer.
• Digital Access Is About People: My Experience as an American Connection Corps Digital Navigator
• AI, Workforce, and Inequality
• President Trump Signs Directive Reshaping How the Military and Intelligence Community Use AI

Upcoming Events

June 19—10k Connections & Counting—How DigitalC and Tarana Are Connecting Cleveland (Broadband Breakfast)

June 24—Building for AI: The Next Wave of Infrastructure Investment (Georgetown University)

June 24—AI without the hype: What rural broadband operators need to know (Telecompetitor)

June 25—June 2026 Open Federal Communications Commission Meeting (Federal Communications Commission)

June 25—Beyond the Spreadsheet: Future-Proofing BEAD Programs with Integrated Data (Fiber Broadband Association)

June 30—The New Push for a National Data Privacy Standard (Information Technology & Innovation Foundation)

The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring that all people in the U.S. have access to competitive, High-Performance Broadband regardless of where they live or who they are. We believe communication policy - rooted in the values of access, equity, and diversity - has the power to deliver new opportunities and strengthen communities.

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