Op-Ed

We served together on the Federal Communications Commission for nearly four years as commissioners: a Democrat from South Carolina and a Republican from Virginia. While we sometimes disagreed, we worked hard with our colleagues to expand broadband deployment and adoption to all Americans — especially the unserved and underserved. And the need to do so is made more acute by the current pandemic. In the midst of this scourge, the importance of broadband to help save lives, jobs and the economy has never been clearer.

Nothing in US history has exposed the rural digital divide as has the COVID-19 pandemic. Too many students in rural communities are being asked to participate in “distance learning” but are being left behind because their community’s infrastructure is insufficient. Adults, too, in rural communities are struggling with access to job listings and unemployment benefit applications as these services are frequently only available online.

If California is really the global tech capital, why is it so hard for small towns there to get the internet service they need? One answer to that question is in Gonzales, a Salinas Valley settlement of 9,000. While California’s biggest cities now struggle to provide internet access for people to work and study from home, Gonzales solved that problem a few months ago. Before the pandemic hit, the town offered broadband service, free of charge, to all its residents.

If the coronavirus pandemic has taught the technology and communications policy world anything, it is that policymakers have utterly failed to meet the mission of the National Broadband Plan. Although the National Broadband Plan provided a road map and initially tracked progress, we have seen a relatively nonpartisan tech policy space abandon consensus views on the technicalities of the network and the importance of universal service principles.

It’s unfortunate that it took a pandemic to reveal that the Internet is a basic human right. Yet in California, home to Silicon Valley, 20 percent of students are not connected in their homes. The solution is clear — build an infrastructure with public-private partnerships to enable systems-level change that addresses the root causes of the issue, creates coordination and empowers various groups across communities. Tech companies, state and local governments, school districts, ISPs, and community organizations all need to invest in a coordinated manner.

The Internet is being tested as never before, exposing serious inequalities in Internet availability and utility. It seems to us vital that these inequalities be remedied, not only in anticipation of the next time the world’s population is forced to “shelter in place” but because these inequalities stifle the innovation and productivity that the Internet makes possible.

Democrats want to take $80 billion from taxpayers to create a new Washington bureaucracy to shovel money to politicians who think they are qualified to run a broadband network. Funding, subsidizing or otherwise creating a government “competitor” does not work. The last time politicians tried to sell this to Americans they claimed state and municipal governments could build and run high-speed broadband profit-making centers. They tried and failed again and again.

History at the crossroads, one of those inflection points when we have the opportunity to learn from our experiences and use them to build a better future. Coronavirus brings us to another of those crossroads. Which road will we take?

The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare many of the inequalities in America, including the differences in access to broadband Internet. Three policies that can help: (1) allow cities to provide their own broadband; (2) expand and reform Lifeline; and (3) provide tax incentives to firms that subsidize their employees’ broadband. The first of these policies stimulates the “supply” of broadband, while the second two stimulate “demand.” Together, these policies should help reduce the digital divide.

Many digital equity advocates applauded the Federal Communications Commission’s recent clarification explicitly allowing public schools and libraries to let their communities access E-Rate-supported Wi-Fi services while their buildings are closed during the COVID-19 pandemic.