Universal Broadband

Only four states meet or exceed the federal minimum of 25 megabytes per second (Mbps) for broadband connectivity — and Pennsylvania isn't one of them. Sascha Meinrath, telecommunications chair at Penn State University, unveiled the results of a 2018 study analyzing over 250 million speed tests from across the U.S during a Pennsylvania state Senate Communications and Technology Committee public hearing. Effectively, more than half of Pennsylvanians do not have access to the minimum broadband connection. While the state Senate Committee hearing addressed concerns over un- and underserved comm

In 2018, Congress asked NTIA to develop a National Broadband Availability Map to determine which parts of the country remain unconnected. Working with an initial group of eight states, NTIA released a pilot version of the map, a geographic information system platform that allows for the visualization of federal, state, and commercially available data sets.

The essential point at the Nevada Broadband Workshop in Reno was this: Communities that want broadband should produce a plan that’s as comprehensive as possible. Hosted by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA) BroadbandUSA program, the workshop guided attendees through various aspects of broadband planning for smaller communities. Even if the cost for a project seems exorbitant, a plan can still be made.

I’d like to outline a few areas of our Universal Service Fund policy that I am currently focused on and address certain matters in need of attention.

Like clean water or electricity, the Internet is now a must in most people's lives, but the federal government says more than 21 million people can't get broadband. Many of them live in rural areas. Now, if they had Internet access, it might slow the brain drain, spur innovation in farming and breathe new life into local economies. Paul Flahive of Texas Public Radio visited one rural community that's turned to an old playbook to connect the disconnected.

Broadband is emerging as a critical campaign issue for the US 2020 presidential election, and there’s good reason: nearly 60 million people in the US do not have broadband service at home. Despite this staggering fact, only four of the 14 presidential candidates we looked at have released fleshed-out policy proposals to expand broadband access (all of them democrats). On the Democratic side, broadband has become a central piece to many rural revitalization plans but as mentioned, only four candidates have released detailed broadband proposals.

In cities like Denver, where broadband is so prolific that availability is estimated at 99.94%, the digital divide is no longer about lack of internet service or limited to rural areas.

For some time, it’s been no secret that the Federal Communications Commission’s Form 477 data overestimates broadband coverage in the US. In response, Georgia took matters into its own hands. Recently, the state had completed maps for three counties — Elbert, Lumpkin and Tift — that showed just how off current FCC data is.   The maps were the result of a pilot carried out by the Georgia Broadband Deployment Initiative (GBDI), which is part of the Georgia Department of Community Affairs.

At the outset of their recent Op-Ed, Blair Levin and Larry Downes reject federal policymakers’ singular focus on promoting rural broadband deployment, arguing that the digital divide is not merely a question of rural access. In fact, they rightly note that there are more disconnected folks in urban areas than in rural ones. Millions of disconnected people live where broadband is already deployed, but still don’t subscribe to it.