Digital Divide

While the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill could provide as much as $65 billion for new broadband infrastructure in the US to close the digital divide, incumbent telecommunication providers are wary of what they call 'overbuilding.' Roger Timmerman, the executive director of Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency (UTOPIA) Fiber, said service providers and their lobbyists created the term overbuilding to make new competition sound like a bad thing. “You could describe the same thing as a new competitive offering in the area,” Timmerman said.

Senate Democrats and Republicans unveiled a roughly $1 trillion proposal to improve the country’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and Internet connections, setting in motion a long-awaited debate in the chamber to enact one of President Biden’s economic policy priorities. The roughly 2,700-page piece of legislation, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, includes $65 billion to expand broadband Internet access nationwide and ensure those who do have connectivity can afford their monthly payments.

This is a historic time for broadband investment. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the high costs of being offline. In response, Congress, over the past year, passed two laws—the Consolidated Appropriations Act and the American Rescue Plan—with an unprecedented amount of funding devoted to promoting digital equity. Communities should be engaged now to help craft long-term connectivity goals and ensure that diverse voices are part of the discussion—and that’s our job.

Washington seems poised, yet again, to try to address broadband infrastructure by throwing billions of dollars at it to be managed at the national level, and already there is a chorus of voices demanding that access to broadband be “free.” All this will ensure the effort fails. What’s needed is a recognition that the only approach that can succeed is a novel combination of public-private partnerships at the local level. The important recognition is that cities are not monolithic. Broadband is a neighborhood issue, driven by different socioeconomic factors that must be addressed.

President Joe Biden and the bipartisan group of lawmakers announced agreement on the details of a once-in-a-generation investment in US infrastructure, which will be taken up in the Senate for consideration. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal includes a total $550 billion in new federal infrastructure investment.

The World Data Lab (WDL) has developed a global measurement framework of internet poverty to measure the number of people left behind in the internet revolution. People who can’t afford a basic package of connectivity—set at 1.5 gigabytes per month at a minimum download speed of 3 megabits per second (equivalent to 6 seconds to load a standard web page)—are internet-poor. WDL estimates that there are around 1.1 billion people living in internet poverty today.

The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Supporting Foundation and David and Inez Myers Foundation are donating $20 million to DigitalC, a non-profit internet service provider (ISP) focused on bridging the digital divide in Cleveland, Ohio. The foundations feel that DigitalC provides the best avenue toward connecting Cleveland, according to Jim Kenny, spokesperson for the nonprofit ISP; DigitalC also says the foundations’ money serves as a challenge to organizations in the private sector and government to also contribute.

Over four million households have enrolled in the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program, the nation’s largest broadband affordability program to date. The $3.2 billion subsidy program initiated by Congress provides a temporary $50 to $75 discount on eligible households’ internet bills during the duration of the pandemic. “We’ve made terrific progress," said Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, "but the [Federal Communications Commission] remains committed to building on this initial momentum so we can connect as many families as possible and help those struggling to get online.” Since the p

Three internet service providers responded to the Rappahannock County Broadband Authority’s official request for information (RFI), bringing the Virginia county one small step closer to procuring broadband for unserved areas. The authority sent the RFI to 13 commercial providers in June 2021 in the hopes of identifying a partner to develop the county’s broadband network and heard back from All Points Broad