The latest COVID-19 relief package includes over $7 billion to expand E-rate to better tackle students’ at-home internet needs. But with the dollars doled out so far into the crisis and the end of the school year fast approaching, expectations for how the additional funding will be spent have shifted among school officials and advocates from getting quick fixes, like mobile hotspots, to more long-term projects that will ensure that schools can sustain the progress they’ve made to become more digital-learning friendly. “This is a down payment on something that the education community has fought for for years,” said Reg Leichty, policy counsel for CoSN, which represents school district technology leaders. “Even outside of a pandemic, we now live in a moment where access to online resources and enrichment activities should be part of even a normal school year.” For most of the pandemic, schools have relied mostly on outside partnerships and community donations to get their students online, said Amina Fazlullah, policy counsel at Common Sense Media.  “Without a coordinated support program from the federal government that was focused on technology and distance learning, schools were at the mercy of whatever options were in their communities, and sometimes these were promotional options that would only last for a handful of months,” Fazlullah said. “There’s been so much uncertainty in what the resources would be available for schools to tap into to be able to plan.”

Beginning March 11, 2021, broadband service providers can submit election notices to Universal Service Administrative Company to participate in the Federal Communications Commission’s Emergency Broadband Benefit Program. To submit an election notice, service providers must complete the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program Election Form and submit it, along with all required documentation, to USAC using the EBBElection@usac.org email box. Service providers who are not eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs) must apply for and receive FCC approval to participate in the EBB Program before submitting their election to USAC. To learn more about the process for service providers to participate in the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program, visit USAC’s website. USAC hosted a training that reviews the details of the FCC approval and USAC election processes – a recording of that training is available on USAC’s website.

Digital literacy is the key component of democratizing the internet. A digitally-literate person has the technical skills to navigate the internet. A digitally-literate person is also media literate, with the ability to critically evaluate the content received and consumed online. Unless we train ourselves, and particularly our children, how to understand and use the internet, it can never realize its vast potential to serve the common good. We must be a digitally literate people. We are not that now. We need to be a digitally literate and media literate people. Our goal should be that every American possess the skills necessary to discern trustworthy from untrustworthy information, fact from opinion, news from infotainment, and real information from misinformation, all derived from a resource-rich media. It is tough slogging to make sense of the barrage of material crowding our computer screens and warping our politics. For some, the easiest route is to pick the opinion narrative that best suits their ideologies, look at nothing else, and shout it from the roof-tops. But if we are serious about overcoming the mountain of obstacles that our kids and our country confront, we must make digital literacy a truly key priority. There is no time to waste.

[Michael Copps is a former Federal Communications Commissioner; he is currently with Common Cause.]

As a Commissioner during the Trump administration, Federal Communications Commission Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel called out the disarray resulting from the lack of a national spectrum policy. “We are heading into our wireless future with something less than a fully coordinated effort,” she warned. The Biden administration has not repeated the failure to prepare with transition planning. “What we need to do is—and the president has been clear—is to step back and have a national strategy on spectrum, and look to make spectrum available from public and commercial uses,” the new Commerce Secretary, Gina Raimondo, told senators at her confirmation hearing. This is an especially important statement not only because she referenced the president’s commitment, but also because National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the focus of such efforts, is within her department. The responsibility of governing is a job of making decisions. The failure of the Trump administration to decide among various priorities to establish a national spectrum policy has left the nation rudderless. It now falls to the Biden administration to place a firm hand on the rudder and guide the nation into the spectrum-based future of communications.