Deputy Commerce Secretary Don Graves, Congressman Mike Doyle (D-PA), and Mayor Bill Peduto (D-PA) hosted a roundtable discussion to address the increasing need for high-speed, affordable internet access in the Pittsburgh (PA) area and across the US. At the Energy Innovation Center in Pittsburgh, Deputy Secretary Graves opened the roundtable by stressing the fact that the COVID-19 pandemic exposed how wide the digital divide is in America and how much Americans rely on broadband for schools, jobs and telemedicine. Participants in the roundtable included Pittsburgh and Alleghany County leaders advocating for broadband access and affordability in schools, healthcare, public safety communications and workforce development. Deputy Secretary Graves praised the Senate’s recent passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which calls for an investment of $65 billion to help bring high-speed broadband to all Americans, to bring down high-speed internet prices across the board, and to close the digital divide. Graves also underscored that broadband will be a top priority for the Department of Commerce and announced that communities across America can now apply to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) Connecting Minority Communities Program that will direct $269 million for expanding broadband access and connectivity to Historically Black, Tribal and minority-serving colleges and universities to help them purchase broadband services or equipment, hire IT personnel, and create digital literacy programs.

For many players these days, the video game industry’s increasing reliance on online connections is an afterthought. But for the significant portion of the world without a quality Internet connection, it can sometimes feel like the game industry at large is leaving them behind. Pointing out the frustration of large day-one updates has been a feature of the gaming industry for more than a decade now. The topic perhaps reached its global breakthrough with the November 13 announcement that the Xbox One would require a day-one update to function. More recently, the Xbox Series X requires a one-time online check-in before some disc-based games will work. 

Studies show that even the US and Europe, whose states and nations rank highly in terms of Internet quality, still have millions of households with low-or-no Internet. As recently as November 2019, 13.4 percent of US households reported having no Internet connection at all. In addition to this, 0.6 percent were still on dial-up, and 4.1 percent were on satellite connections, both of which have lower top-speed capabilities. Numbers are similar in Europe where, in 2019, 90 percent of households had Internet access; only 88 percent of which had a broadband connection. Even in these technologically advanced countries, those numbers represented tens of millions of potential players being essentially left behind by one of the largest and fastest-growing entertainment industries in the world. In other parts of the world, even more people are unable to play video games because of increasing Internet requirements and are at risk of being pushed out of the hobby because of it.