Since Comcast is doing so well, one might think they could afford to be a good corporate citizen and community partner when it comes to bridging the digital equity divide. But apparently Comcast officials don’t have to play nice when they are the dominant game in town. Instead, the company has been at constant odds with Baltimore City officials and advocates over access to the internet services Baltimore children need for online learning.

Some of the same internet have-nots who have been at risk of losing access to remote education, telemedicine and social connections throughout the pandemic are now at risk of being left out when it comes to registering for the vaccine.

Sen Ed Markey (D-MA), Commerce Committee Chairwoman Maria Cantwell (D-WA), and Sens Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), and Brian Schatz (D-HI) led 31 of their colleagues in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, urging the agency’s new leadership to take long overdue action and utilize the E-Rate Program to help close the “homework gap” during the coronavirus pandemic.

Since schools shut down in spring, districts have scrambled to distribute laptops and internet so students can engage in schooling from home. But almost a year later, with no end in sight for virtual learning, millions of students still lack reliably fast internet or a working computer — the basic tools to participate in live lessons from home. The digital divide is complicated to solve. The cost of broadband is out of reach for many families.

Schools around Texas regularly dispatch internet-equipped buses to areas of their community with the lowest rates of online connectivity. Others extended Wi-Fi into parking lots.

In 2020, states directed millions of CARES Act funds toward broadband infrastructure. While any money for high-speed Internet is a good thing, these dollars initially came with an aggressive Dec 2020 deadline, meaning that some local stakeholders were better positioned than others to take on the timeline burden. Some PA and VA county leaders did not feel comfortable pursuing the money because of uncertainty as to whether their broadband challenges could be interpreted as COVID-related issues, as local connectivity problems existed well before the pandemic struck.

For as long as the internet has existed, there has been a divide between those who have it and those who do not, with increasingly high stakes for people stuck on the wrong side of America’s “persistent digital divide.” That’s one reason why, from the earliest days of his presidential campaign, Joe Biden promised to make universal broadband a priority. But Biden’s promise has taken on extra urgency as a result of the pandemic.

As policymakers address the immediate needs of students and teachers, they should also use this as an opportunity to take a fresh look at the E-rate program, both from how it has been operationalized to date as well as its goals for the future. AT&T believes the following principles should guide any expansion of the program:  

In this Report and Order, we take the next step toward committing funding through the COVID-19 Telehealth Program (Program) by finding it is in the public interest to expand the administrative responsibilities of the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) to include the Program. In March 2020, Congress allocated $200 million to the Federal Communications Commission to establish a program to help health care providers offer telehealth and connected care services and connected devices to patients at their homes or mobile locations in response to the COVID19 pandemic. The FCC establis

Three institutional and strategic problems that President Joe Biden’s Federal Communications Commission will have to resolve: