Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Representative Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY-18) introduced a bicameral bill that would increase access to broadband service for low-income urban and rural Americans.  The Promoting Access to Broadband Act (S.1102) would help states increase awareness and enrollment in the Federal Communications Commission’s Lifeline Program. The Lifeline Program helps low-income households pay for their telephone and broadband service charges by providing a monthly subsidy of $9.25, yet enrollment numbers in the program remain extremely low nationwide. The Promoting Access to Broadband Act would do the following:

• Award grants to at least five states; 
• Direct the FCC to consider several factors in evaluating the applications, including: states that have a higher number of covered individuals, states with plans with the potential to reach a higher percentage of eligible-but-not-enrolled households, and the geographic diversity of the applicants;
• Allow states to use the funds for a variety of Lifeline enrollment efforts, including:
  
  • Informing Medicaid enrollees, SNAP participants, and low-income individuals of their potential eligibility in the Lifeline program,
  • Providing these individuals with information about how to apply for the Lifeline program, 
  • Partnering with non-profit and community-based organizations to provide individuals with assistance applying for Lifeline and information about product and technology choices; and

• Require the FCC to issue a report to Congress within a year of establishing the grant program evaluating the program’s effectiveness.

In COVID times, many courts remain closed to in-person proceedings. Hearings continue online. They are streamlined, quick and, for some, convenient. Participants with busy lives can attend on their lunch break at work or at home while caring for their kids. But without greater attention to equal access, remote justice is likely to leave tenants and landlords alike worse off. Many tenants behind on rent also lack the technological resources to participate effectively in virtual proceedings. They may have no internet service or unreliable, spotty service. Those attending by smartphone may have limited data plans, making lengthy hearings, or hearings at the end of a billing cycle, unaffordable. Tenants whose first language is not English, who have limited education, or are unused to navigating online environments might have trouble keeping up. The digital divide should not become a justice divide, especially when help for tenants and landlords alike is already on its way.

[Jason Mazzone is a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law. Robin Fretwell Wilson is the director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois System and a professor at the College of Law.]

As local areas and states keep slugging away at the digital divide, time and money may separate the winners from the losers in the broadband infrastructure game. One potential way to save time and money is through a “dig-once” approach, which refers to the idea of minimizing the number and scale of excavations when installing telecommunications infrastructure in highway rights-of-way. If a dig-once policy can make so much sense, why isn’t everyone doing it? 

Jeff Sural, director of broadband infrastructure for the North Carolina Department of Information Technology (DIT), noted how the upfront cost of installing a conduit can be a legitimate fear for government.  “You’re not sure if it [the conduit] will ever be used,” Sural said. “That money could be kind of wasted. If you’re DOT [Department of Transportation], your budgets will probably be pretty strict.” Another fear is related to engineering standards, Sural said. There’s no guarantee a given Internet service provider (ISP) will want to use a conduit if it wasn’t built according to the ISP’s standards. With such disastrous possibilities in mind, North Carolina’s dig-once policy, which hasn’t been implemented yet, amounts to more of a “cost-sharing opportunity” for ISPs. Under the policy, if an ISP submits an easement request to DOT with the intent to install broadband infrastructure, DOT will be notified and will post a notice about the request on a portal for ISPs. 

Acting Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel revealed just how soon she hopes to set up the $7 billion subsidy program aimed at helping students get internet connections at home. Congress slated this money for the FCC as part of the pandemic relief package that President Joe Biden signed into law in march. The FCC is still “mid-course in developing” the program for doling out these subsidies, which could help put Wi-Fi hotspots and modems in the hands of students stuck at home, said Chairman Rosenworcel. She added the agency is collecting public feedback through April 23 and added, “It’s my hope then by mid-May we will have policies voted on by my colleagues and in place to get this Homework Gap program up and running.”