With nearly 1,000 rural Latino communities spread across the country, rural internet access has long been a priority for Latinos. But the past eight months have created a new sense of urgency. Recently, 19 national organizations representing communities of color, many of them Latino, recently petitioned the Federal Communications Commission.  While the details are complicated, the outcome is not: expanding high-speed internet would be faster and more affordable, benefitting Latino families in rural communities across America.

AT&T CFO John Stephens said that adding more fiber was about more than just passing additional homes. "I think about the fiber being part of my core transport network, and serving business customers and connecting to large business customers and small business customers, and then I think of it as an opportunity to connect the homes," he said. "So I have a three-for-one in this integrated carrier environment that really gives me a different opportunity than others. When I say three-for-one, that's three revenue opportunities, as well as a really efficient cost structure.

We’re not going back to broadband circa 2019. Every aspect of life is going to have a significant virtual component from here on. That’s the lesson we’ve learned in 2020 about the use of broadband networks by people in their homes. Residential broadband access has become crucial to work and learn, to schedule and attend remote visits with a doctor, and to remain connected with family and friends—especially with multiple members of the household online at the same time.

President-elect Joe Biden and top congressional Democrats are laying the groundwork to seek a massive increase in federal broadband spending in 2021, hoping they can secure billions of dollars in new government aid to improve Internet access and affordability — and help people stay online during the pandemic. Party leaders are mulling a wide array of proposals that would extend the availability of broadband in hard-to-reach rural areas, raise Internet speeds for American households, assist families who are struggling to pay their Internet bills and provide more funding to schools for comput

The COVID-19 pandemic has shined a light on Montana’s widening digital divide. Working from home, online school and telehealth have all become pandemic necessities, but many Montanans don’t have access to adequate broadband internet. Cooperatives across the state said that the digital divide doesn’t exist solely between urban and rural Montana like many people believe. “Yes, there is a digital divide in Montana,” said Jason Williams, CEO of Blackfoot Communications in Missoula.

Our failure to create inclusive policies that close the digital divide has done serious harm to the Americans who were already struggling to put food on their tables prior to the pandemic. The failures of our past, however, do not have to dictate the future. It is time—in fact, it is past,time—for the tech and telecom sector to take account for issues of equity and fairness. 

GAO reviewed distance learning plans from a nongeneralizable group of 15 school districts, selected for their high proportion of either English learners or students with disabilities.

Access to high-performance broadband is a civil rights issue according to Broadband for America Now, a report from the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.

Many people take access to high-speed internet for granted, but the Federal Communications Commission says more than 800,000 Pennsylvanians do not have access to broadband. Broadband coverage has always been spotty in rural areas, but with students forced to stay home, the problem has become critical. Even when there is reliable service, the cost of broadband can be a barrier.

About 95,000 Kansas households have no access to the internet or lack what has been defined as the bare minimum of internet access, said State Rep. Mark Schreiber (R-Emporia ), a member of the Statewide Broadband Expansion Planning Task Force. Fast internet is so crucial to daily life that Kansans are finding creative workarounds, from turning their phones into hotspots to finding someplace nearby where they can access Wi-Fi.  Some schools in rural areas allow students to access their Wi-Fi from the parking lot on evenings and weekends.