Inequities in local school systems because of a lack of funding, technology or parental involvement will be exacerbated by schools’ remote learning and hybrid plans in response to the rapidly spreading coronavirus. School districts that can afford it are trying to help. Some are giving or loaning laptops to students who don’t have them. Others are giving out Wi-Fi hotspots so that children can get online. Elsewhere, some teachers are calling students individually to help with assignments, or even dropping off textbooks and paper homework.

Across the rural US, more than 100 cooperatives, first launched to provide electric and telephone services as far back as the 1930s, are now laying miles of fiber optic cable to connect their members to high-speed internet. Many started building their own networks after failing to convince established internet service providers to cover their communities. But while rural fiber optic networks have spread swiftly over the past five years, their progress has been uneven.

As students throughout Kentucky prepare for a new school year and more remote learning amid a pandemic, the state should view internet access as a public good similar to electricity and school buses, several education and workforce leaders said. The issue of the Bluegrass State's "digital divide" was the focus of a briefing featuring former Kentucky education commissioner Wayne Lewis, State Sen.

More than one in five low-income households did not have any access to the internet in 2018, more than four times the rate of all other households. A staggering 43.7 percent of low-income households lacked access to personal high-speed internet at home, more than double that of the rest of the population.  Our analysis of data from the American Community Survey (ACS) shows that immigrant communities are also heavily affected. More than 5.2 million immigrant households, almost three out of 10, lacked access to personal broadband internet access at home in 2018.

PHLConnectED will connect up to 35,000 K-12 student households with internet service in Philadelphia. The program will offer eligible student households up to two years of high-speed internet. Participants will not pay any out-of-pocket expenses or installation fees. PHLConnectED has three key components:

On the Senate Floor, Sen Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) spoke about the impact that the lack of access to broadband is having on Americans during the coronavirus pandemic – particularly students and low-income families – and the critical need to bring high-speed internet to every family, regardless of their zip code. 

Fifteen Mississippi rural electric cooperatives have won a combined total of $65 million in rural broadband funding through the CARES Act passed earlier in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 crisis. The money came indirectly through the state, which carved out $75 million for rural broadband from a larger pool of funding it received through the act. The rural electric cooperatives must spend the funding they were awarded before the end of the year and must invest an additional $65 million of their own in the broadband projects.

Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) introduced two bills addressing broadband issues facing many in our country: The Connecting Minority Communities Act and the Governors Broadband Development Fund.

University of Virginia Professor Christopher Ali spoke about rural broadband with the Reimagine New York Commission. The rural-urban digital divide is primarily one of infrastructure. At least 22.3% of rural Americans, or 15.8 million people, lack access to broadband infrastructure and are therefore cut off from the internet.

Connect Americans Now (CAN) sent a letter to Congressional leaders, co-signed by 46 organizations, calling on lawmakers to provide funding to eliminate the digital divide for all Americans as part of the next COVID-19 relief package.