Diversity

Congressional leaders and advocacy group Media 2070 urged the Federal Communications Commission to examine how policy decisions and programs have disparately harmed Black Americans and other communities of color in a letter to Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel on June 28.

The New York Public Service Commission (PSC) this week stayed and suspended proceedings and requests for comment about a state law that would have required broadband providers to offer a $15 plan to low-income households. It is the second blow that the law has sustained this month, following a US Eastern District Court of New York preliminary injunction to prevent the state from enforcing the rule while awaiting a final decision on the legality of the requirement.

Incremental progress and temporary band-aids to mend the digital divide aren't a sufficient response to such a fundamental obstacle to equity and opportunity; as the late Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis argued, unequal internet access is "the civil rights issue of the 21st Century." That's why Congress must now work to transform the temporary Emergency Broadband Benefit initiative into a permanent broadband assistance program. Civil rights advocates–including the National Urban League, the NAACP, and the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council–have laid out a 

Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced that the Federal Communications Commission will re-charter the Advisory Committee for Diversity and Digital Empowerment under a new name–the Communications Equity and Diversity Council. The Council’s mission will expand from its initial focus on the media ecosystem to review critical diversity and equity issues across the technology sector. This Committee is charged with providing recommendations to ensure that underserved communities are not denied the wide range of opportunities made possible by next-generation networks.

The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released the Final Rule for the Connecting Minority Communities Pilot Program, which will direct $268 million for expanding broadband to eligible historically Black Colleges or Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges or Universities (TCUs), and minority-serving institutions (MSIs).

In Allendale (SC), a local public Wi-Fi network project has expanded to offer residential broadband service for families with school-age children, many of whom have struggled to keep up with school throughout the pandemic because they cannot participate in online learning.

As governments push for universal adoption of broadband Internet service, policies must address the fact that many households with access to the service do not to subscribe to it. Lower adoption rates in some minority communities are one cause for concern. A confounding factor with respect to race is that it is often correlated with income, education, and other factors that drive Internet adoption in the home.

The Robert W. Deutsch Foundation is graduating the first cohort of the Digital Equity Leadership Lab, a pilot leadership program that offers training on everything that a person seeking to be an expert on internet advocacy needs to know. The five-week program covered topics including laws governing the internet, core concepts about network engineering and the workings of community internet networks, like mesh networks. The group of 25 participants also met with guest speakers, such as former Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Mignon L.

There is a vast literature that examines the determinants of the gender digital gap in developing countries, and puts forth policy recommendations to mitigate it. However, few studies examine how gender differences in labor force participation and employment patterns affect ICT adoption in general, or Internet use in particular.

On March 31, the National Urban League released the Lewis Latimer Plan for Digital Equity and Inclusion, a collaborative work aimed at addressing the digital divide. If you have the time, follow the link above and give the full report a read. If not, here's the executive summary.