March 2020

Elementary and secondary school districts across Illinois are moving toward online or e-learning while students remain at home in an effort to contain the coronavirus. One district in southern Illinois has taken a unique approach to ensure every student has access to the internet. Belleville Township High School District 201, located outside St. Louis, is deploying four school buses equipped with WiFi to serve as Wi-Fi hotspots throughout the community.

In this disorienting and terrifying moment in American history, there's one sliver of good news: The internet seems to be working. Communications networks are surviving an explosion of videoconferencing, distance learning and shelter-in-place streaming. That makes Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai very happy. He said his agency has been working with the White House, other federal agencies and private industry to plot out a strategy for keeping Americans connected during this crisis.

As COVID-19 requires more schools to transition to online learning, the students who were already the most vulnerable to falling behind will face even more hurdles to keep pace. The efforts of the Federal Communications Commission and Internet service providers during this crisis ought to be commended, but their quick response also begs the question: Was broadband access not essential before COVID-19? Long before the coronavirus drew national attention to the issue, digital inclusion advocates were stressing the disparate outcomes for students without internet.

The coronavirus outbreak and the rise in remote work has advanced the need for more robust 5G technologies in the US. Verizon stated March 18 that the demands on bandwidth increased 75% over the previous week. The Federal Communications Commission and federal government are trying to accelerate deployment in urban and rural areas. But, the global pandemic has forced a supply chain slowdown that may delay further expansion of 5G.