Daily Yonder

• Digital deserts exist, more so in rural areas.
• The urban-rural access divide is sizeable and still persists.
• A little less than half of housing units in the country are sliced up in between either top 6 only providers or other providers only.
• The technology with the largest footprint in the nation (DSL) also has the lowest median advertised speeds pointing to a potential quality of service issue.

The Daily Yonder, working with the Rural Assembly, identified a dozen rural-policy advocates with firsthand knowledge about the impact of federal policy in rural communities. They asked these in-the-trenches experts to name the top policies they would like to see 2020 presidential candidates address and eventually enact. Roberto Gallardo, Assistant Director of the Purdue Center for Regional Development at Purdue University, wrote on Technology and Broadband:

A collaboration of three national rural nonprofits hopes to create a more accurate picture for researchers and advocates to use to see how their communities measure up. The TestIT smartphone app invites rural residents to participate in the effort, identifying current broadband speed and service gaps in underserved communities.

Nearly three-quarters of the downloads hitting Microsoft servers from nonmetropolitan counties are so slow they don’t meet the Federal Communications Commission definition of broadband. Microsoft’s county-level data shows a big gap between what the federal government says is available and what people actually use. The main takeaway from this is that accurate data to measure broadband access and use remains elusive.

When communities design broadband infrastructure to facilitate healthcare and telehealth delivery, they obviously plan to connect medical practitioners’ hospitals, offices, and other healthcare facilities. Network connections to homes are growing in importance as government policies and market forces favor telehealth deployments. What about schools and libraries? In many communities, school districts and libraries outperform broadband in people’s homes.

[Commentary] The digital age and its applications has the potential to eliminate density and geographic proximity requirements, that were so critical during the industrial age. It is possible then, in the digital age, for a rural community to maintain its “rural” feel and continue to leverage its natural amenities while taking advantage of what only dense urban areas enjoyed last century.

[Commentary] If you just look at overall numbers, our population seems to be behaving just like they did in the industrial age – moving to cities where jobs and people are concentrated. Rural areas that lag in broadband connectivity and digital literacy will continue to suffer from these old trends. However, the digital age is young. Its full effects are still to be felt. Remember it took several decades for electricity or the automobile to revolutionize society.

[Commentary] When they live in remote rural areas, millennials are more likely to reside in a county that has better digital access. The findings could indicate that the digital economy is helping decentralize the economy, not just clustering economic change in the cities that are already the largest. If you just look at overall numbers, our population seems to be behaving just like they did in the industrial age – moving to cities where jobs and people are concentrated.  Rural areas that lag in broadband connectivity and digital literacy will continue to suffer from these old trends.