Heartland Forward has created a multi-year, multi-pronged initiative, Connecting the Heartland, that includes a new workshop series to bring together decision-makers and influencers from the Beltway with the problem-solvers and doers in the Heartland who are working to expand high-speed internet access.
Without a massive investment to build out the country’s open fiber infrastructure and a new set of rules to govern its use, the United States risks being left behind. Recommendations:
SpaceX has received more than 500,000 orders for Starlink broadband service. The preorders required a $99 deposit for service that would be available in the second half of 2021. The 500,000 total orders presumably include both US residents and people in other countries; we asked SpaceX for more details and will update this article if we get a response. A preorder doesn't guarantee that you'll get service, and slots are limited in each geographic region because of capacity limits.
The digital divide and the homework gap haven't gone away, even with new attention and funding directed toward emergency relief.
Quantifying the economic impact of bridging the digital divide clearly shows the criticality of broadband infrastructure to the US economy. Deloitte developed economic models to evaluate the relationship between broadband and economic growth. The models indicate that a 10-percentage-point increase of broadband penetration in 2016 would have resulted in more than 806,000 additional jobs in 2019, or an average annual increase of 269,000 jobs. Moreover, Deloitte found a strong correlation between broadband availability and jobs and GDP growth.
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