Gender

For the better part of a generation, low-income and minority US communities have struggled to gain access to affordable broadband.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Steady but uneven progress in global Internet connectivity highlights the disparities of the digital divide and is leaving people in low-income countries behind. Approximately sixty-seven percent of the world's population, or 5.4 billion people, is now online.

The big ISPs certainly have their knickers in a knot over the adoption of digital discrimination rules by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC was required to adopt some version of digital discrimination rules by language included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).

Here’s everything we have on deck for our November Open Meeting.

The Federal Communications Commission launched a proceeding designed to explore ways the FCC’s Mapping Broadband Health in America platform could be expanded and enhanced to help better leverage digital health tools to improve maternal care. The FCC seeks comment on issues that will help guide the next phase of this mapping platform and inform associated data analytics work concerning the relationship between broadband and maternal health.

Limited global research exists about girls’ and boys’ access to and use of mobile phones. For girls, access is much more diverse and colourful than simply whether they ‘have’ or ‘have not’ got a phone. Access is often transient, and diverse ownership, borrowership and sharing practices are flourishing. Boys are 1.5 times more likely to own a phone and 1.8 times more likely to own a smartphone. They're also more likely to use phones in more diverse and internet-enabled ways than girls. Girls are going to great lengths to gain access.

The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program, the US government’s $42 billion broadband grants program, requires recipients to provide a Letter of Credit for 25% of the grant award. Alongside the additional 25% match requirement, this capital barrier will shut out a huge number of internet service providers (ISP).The small and community-centered ISPs, minority and women-owned businesses, nonprofits, and municipalities that the program claims to be targeting will be most affected.

Senator Edward Markey (D-MA) and Representative Doris Matsui (D-CA) reintroduced their Algorithmic Justice and Online Platform Transparency Act. Specifically, the Algorithmic Justice and Online Platform Transparency Act would:

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information April McClain-Delaney traveled to Jackson (TN) with Senior Advisor to the President and White House Infrastructure Coordinator Mitch Landrieu to celebrate new fiber optic cable production in the US made possible by the Biden-Harris Administration’s Internet for All initiative, a key component of President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) requires the use of Made-in-America materials and products for federally funded infrastructure projects, including high-speed

[The National Telecommunications and Information Administration] just announced the amounts each state and territory will receive from the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. That includes $813 million for Tennessee to build future-proof networks to connect everyone in the state. Our task is simple, but it’s monumental: we are going to bridge the digital divide. For good. But we cannot reach that goal without industry stepping up.