Reporting

Students without reliable in-home internet are already at an educational deficit, and many of the remote learning tools the pandemic has ushered in are here to stay.

In Indian Country, the proportion of households with high-speed internet access has consistently lagged behind the rest of the US. There has been some work to improve things, with an influx of federal funding helping some tribes build their own broadband networks. A Federal Communications Commission program is giving tribes across the US wireless-spectrum licenses for free.

As many local governments have scrambled to secure internet access for children in virtual school, some policies could last past the pandemic. One popular approach in cities like Washington (DC) and Chicago has been providing low-cost or free service to families who can’t afford a broadband subscription, and the tech devices to go with them.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee and his business partner, John Bruce, have launched Inrupt, a company that allows consumers, rather than companies, to control their own data, to store it in pods, and to move it wherever they please. That means Facebook, Google or any other Big Tech company will no longer be able to extract an individual's photos, comments or purchase history without asking.

A recent discussion at the University of Virginia, Addressing Barriers to Equitable Distance Learning, focused on how lack of internet access affects education, but also highlighted impacts related to health care, the economy and more. In an introduction, School of Education and Human Development Dean Bob Pianta outlined a “profound digital divide” that affects communities across the US, particularly low-income areas – both rural and urban – and communities of color. “The pandemic has exposed the realities and inequities of the digital divide,” he said.

A new SpaceX filing outlines plans for Starlink to offer phone service, emergency backup for voice calls, and cheaper plans for people with low incomes through the government's Lifeline program. The details are in Starlink's petition to the Federal Communications Commission for designation as an Eligible Telecommunications Carrier (ETC) under the Communications Act. SpaceX said it needs that legal designation in some of the states where it won government funding to deploy broadband in unserved areas.

Some of the same internet have-nots who have been at risk of losing access to remote education, telemedicine and social connections throughout the pandemic are now at risk of being left out when it comes to registering for the vaccine.

Some of the winning bids in the Federal Communications Commission's Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auction were for unrealistically low levels of support and the net result could be that those areas do not get service, according to two of the rural electric cooperatives that bid in the auction. Midwest Energy Communications (MEC) won $37 million in the RDOF auction as part of a consortium organized by the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative (NRTC).

Since schools shut down in spring, districts have scrambled to distribute laptops and internet so students can engage in schooling from home. But almost a year later, with no end in sight for virtual learning, millions of students still lack reliably fast internet or a working computer — the basic tools to participate in live lessons from home. The digital divide is complicated to solve. The cost of broadband is out of reach for many families.

Schools around Texas regularly dispatch internet-equipped buses to areas of their community with the lowest rates of online connectivity. Others extended Wi-Fi into parking lots.