On the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic, about 70 percent of Philadelphians had a broadband internet connection according to the U.S. Census’s 2019 American Community Survey. The city’s sprawling digital divide was heavily racialized: a mere 53 percent of Black residents and 44 percent of Latinx residents in Philadelphia had broadband connections. Consequently, in 2018 the National Digital Inclusion Alliance named Philadelphia one of the “worst connected cities” in the United States. 

As the COVID-19 pandemic set in, Philadelphia’s long-standing digital divide erupted into a full blown connectivity crisis. Thousands of Philadelphians who could not afford a home internet connection were forced to hunt for a Wi-Fi signal around the city. Many residents idled in parked cars in McDonald’s parking lots and lingered outside of public libraries to connect to a free Wi-Fi network. School-age children saw their Zoom screens freeze during classes due to insufficient bandwidth and speeds. Other Philadelphians attempted to use mobile data to do remote learning, attend telehealth appointments, and participate in virtual work meetings. And those who could not improvise a way to connect to the internet simply went without Comcast.

This connectivity crisis most impacted the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Yet, just a few miles away from low-income North Philadelphia neighborhoods like Poplar, Kensington, and Fairhill, the nation’s largest internet service provider, Comcast, maintains its global corporate headquarters in a 58-story skyscraper in the heart of Center City.

Even as COVID ravaged Philadelphia’s economy, disproportionately affecting its most marginalized and least connected communities, Comcast’s stock ended 2020 over 15 percent higher. The wealth of Comcast and the connectivity struggles of Philadelphians are not a matter of happenstance: Comcast’s headquarters loom above the city’s skyline in part because the company has succeeded in making the internet into a costly commodity.

“A Special Relationship”

Historically, Comcast has maintained a close, “special relationship” with Philadelphia’s government. For instance, Comcast is one of the largest corporations and employers in the city. Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker counts Comcast lobbyist William F. Dunbar Sr. amongst her closest advisors. Comcast owns the Wells Fargo Center, home to the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers. And most Philadelphians connect to the internet through Comcast.

During the outbreak of COVID-19, Philadelphia’s government had little choice but to partner with Comcast to help connect the unconnected throughout the city. Comcast’s immense influence over municipal broadband policy and its effective monopoly on low-income internet plans in Philadelphia ensured that the ISP became an essential player in the city’s response to the  connectivity crisis. As Mark Wheeler, Philadelphia’s former Chief Information Officer, put it, “We don’t have another provider who has complete 100 percent [broadband] coverage.”

Comcast’s low-cost Internet Essentials plan became a crucial avenue the city pursued for connecting unconnected Philadelphia residents during the pandemic. However, despite the city government’s close collaboration with Comcast on Philadelphia’s connectivity crisis response, the partnership yielded uneven results. For example, initial low-income connectivity efforts were hindered by Comcast’s refusal to enroll subscribers in Internet Essentials if they had any outstanding Comcast bills. Likewise, Internet Essentials offered only 15/2 Mbps service speeds at the outset of the pandemic, which fell even below the Federal Communications Commission’s benchmark of 25/3 Mbps. In March 2020, Comcast increased the speed of Internet Essentials to meet the FCC’s minimums. Yet, even 25/3 Mbps proved too slow to sustain data-intensive, pandemic-era internet activities like remote learning and virtual work. Only after significant pressure from Philadelphia activist groups, a year into the pandemic Comcast increased the speed of Internet Essentials to 50/5 Mbps. 

Comcast was also a key supporter of Philadelphia’s major connectivity initiative, PHLConnectED, a public-private partnership that turned to the Philadelphia School District to help families with school children apply for internet subsidies and device donations, including computers and tablets. PHLConnectED became the basis for Philadelphia’s Digital Literacy Alliance and Digital Navigator Program, which were funded by the municipal government, the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, and private donations. These initiatives established a network of local nonprofits tasked with assisting the city’s poorest residents to connect to the internet during the pandemic.

The city of Philadelphia built its post-pandemic with Comcast’s broadband monopoly in mind. The city invested and further developed its Digital Navigator program, which was charged with helping qualifying households enroll in the FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP)—a $30-a-month federal government subsidy intended to help low-income households pay for home internet access. Digital Navigators also helped people sign up for Internet Essentials. The ACP subsidy then paid for Internet Essentials subscriptions.

The City of Philadelphia forged the Digital Navigator network because the government lacked the internal capacity to conduct outreach to all of Philadelphia’s low-income communities. The ExCITe Center at Drexel University was tasked with enrolling eligible individuals throughout West Philadelphia. Beyond Literacy mostly serves residents throughout North Philadelphia. SEAMAAC is based in South Philadelphia and primarily serves immigrants from Southeast Asia. Eventually, Philadelphia enlisted Esperanza to focus on Spanish-language outreach and technical support. These organizations regularly met with each other to share best practices for Digital Navigators. Comcast funded the Digital Navigator work of many of these organizations. Comcast also provided guidance, device support, and other assistance as a key member of the Digital Literacy Alliance, which became a lynchpin of the city’s post-pandemic connectivity efforts. 

This labyrinthine network of nonprofits, municipal government agencies, and telecom corporations was forged in the shadow of Philadelphia’s failed municipal broadband experiment, one of the country’s earliest and largest urban experiments with alternate modes of broadband provision. To close Philadelphia’s gaping digital divide, in 2004 the city embarked on an ambitious effort to build a municipal wireless network. Aggressive lobbying by the telecommunications industry successfully pressured the city to outsource ownership of the network to the corporate ISP EarthLink, which proceeded to abandon the construction of the network when it deemed it insufficiently profitable. Had the telecommunications lobby not thwarted Philadelphia’s municipal broadband initiative, the city might have fared like other cities with municipal broadband during the pandemic such as Chattanooga, which connected thousands of economically disadvantaged students quickly and at no cost at the onset of the pandemic. 

Assessing Public-Private Initiatives to Connect Philadelphians

Few cities reflect the contradictions of the political economy of U.S. internet connectivity as singularly as Philadelphia. The city is at once the home of Comcast’s headquarters; the site of one of the earliest, most ambitious, and ultimately failed experiments with municipal broadband in the country; and one of the worst connected major cities in the U.S. The city government proactively seeks partnerships and solutions to connect the most marginalized residents, while Comcast plays a prominent role in supporting these efforts and influencing program development and implementation. 

Our project examines the effectiveness of low-income internet plans in the city as well as the implementation of ACP in connecting the poorest communities in Philadelphia. Accordingly, our research focuses on the efforts of the Digital Navigator network that emerged during the pandemic—which includes the city government, organizations doing Digital Navigator work in Philadelphia, and internet service providers—to conduct outreach to those communities and to help people enroll in low-income internet plans, as well as in the ACP subsidy. We aimed to not only better understand how well such efforts work, but also to what extent they can achieve universal service. 

As part of our study, we set out to speak with city officials, Digital Navigator staff, and subscribers to these plans to identify any barriers to enrollment in these programs. During our research, we also began to ask questions about the nature of this network of organizations, the assumptions built into the network, and the legitimations of it. We became interested not only in municipal efforts to connect the most marginalized Philadelphia communities, but also in the mode and structure of the Digital Navigator network itself, since similar programs are increasingly deployed in other cities. 

 

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Authors:
David Elliot Berman, Assistant Professor, Seton Hall University
Pawel Popiel, Assistant Professor, Washington State University

 

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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