The US government is negotiating a plan to address one of the most important—but overlooked—problems facing the country: the digital divide. While this problem is often talked about as a simple problem of access to broadband internet service, it is deeper and more complex than mere infrastructure. In truth, the digital divide also is a problem of inclusivity, institutions, and individual proficiency, and a solution needs to address all four dimensions. To close the digital divide, policymakers should:

1. Pay for improvements using a “Romer” tax levied on digital ads
2. Coordinate locally appropriate solutions
3. Recruit Big Tech and major internet service providers to help close gaps
4. Invite public-private solutions
5. Update and expand existing affordability programs
6. Build in future-proofing
7. Invest in digital literacy

Bridging of the digital divide is both complex and daunting, but there are reasons for hope. Many institutions—both public and private—stand to gain from it being addressed. We now have a rare bipartisan agreement on the urgency of solving the problem. Let’s act on it.

[Bhaskar Chakravorti is the Dean of Global Business at The Fletcher School at Tufts University and founding Executive Director of Fletcher’s Institute for Business in the Global Context.]

To sell regulators on their $26 billion mega merger, T-Mobile and Sprint executives told anyone who’d listen that the deal would provide near-miraculous benefits. But economists warned that US telecom merger promises are historically meaningless, and the reduction in overall competitors would — sooner or later — result in higher prices and job cuts. Instead of heeding their warnings and blocking the deal, US antitrust enforcers concocted an elaborate workaround: they would erect Dish Network as the nation’s new fourth major wireless carrier. Under the plan Dish received some T-Mobile spectrum, the Boost Mobile prepaid brand, and the assurance that T-Mobile would help Dish run a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) while it got its own nationwide network up and running. But squabbling between the companies culminated in Dish announcing it would be replacing T-Mobile with AT&T as its primary partner, indicating that T-Mobile and Dish were simply incapable of getting along, and the government was never that interested in forcing them.

The head-scratching inside the Beltway continues as the wait for a fifth Beatle... um, er... Federal Communications Commissioner — and for whoever is to be named the agency’s permanent chair — continues. Initial delays were thought to involve a decision between Acting Chair Jessica Rosenworcel and current Commissioner Geoffrey Starks who had the backing of the Congressional Black Caucus. But the name of broadband advocate and Public Knowledge Founder Gigi Sohn has surfaced as a new possible alternative — and one for whom the buzz had been growing — particularly given Biden's decision to name progressive Lina Khan as chair of the Federal Trade Commission, over the more-centrist Acting Chair Rebecca Kelly Slaughter. Just as Khan‘s appointment was taken as a sign President Biden had chosen a get-tough policy on Big Tech, Sohn's could be viewed as a sign President Biden was going to get tough on internet service providers in the effort to achieve universal broadband under a definition that includes high speeds and low prices. Chairwoman Rosenworcel still has strong Capitol Hill backing, and one top Republican source said that, political differences notwithstanding, she was “terrific.” But FTC Commissioner Slaughter had the backing of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Khan still got the nod.