Blair Levin

[Commentary] Though the United States has made profound progress in making Internet access universally available, a new digital divide has emerged that defies conventional solutions. Since both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have promised to expand broadband opportunities if elected president, it’s crucial for future policy decisions that we understand who is still offline and why.

According to the most recent findings of the Pew Research Center, 13 percent of Americans still do not use the Internet. Of that group, the most telling variable is no longer race, sex or even income. It’s age. Over 40 percent of seniors are offline, compared with 1 percent of millennials. Two other groups stand out as digital holdouts — rural Americans (22 percent) and those with less than a high school education (34 percent). This is our new digital divide. And closing the inclusion gap demands a significant change in strategy. The new digital divide can only be bridged by making digital life more relevant. And there’s a relatively simple way to do it.

Older, rural, and less-educated Americans share one important characteristic — they are all heavy users of government services. Migrating entitlements to easy-to-use applications, and providing training through community-based groups, will make the Internet essential, if not irresistible, to those still disconnected.

[Downes is a project director at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy. Levin is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. In 2009, he oversaw development of the Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Plan.]

[Commentary] As metropolitan economies of all shapes and sizes prepare for a future with gigabit-speed broadband, one of the biggest costs to deploying a fiber network is preparing utility poles to carry a new fiber line. Since multiple cables typically attach to poles—think about cable television, telephone, etc.—a professional must reorganize them before attaching a new cable. This process, known as “make ready”, has become the next policy battleground in the fiber-dependent “game of gigs.”

Why is this issue important to cities? Most mayors, in my experience, would like to ensure that all their businesses and residents have access to affordable, abundant bandwidth. The issue is that most don’t believe their cities have such broadband today. And while some might consider the city offering its own broadband service to meet that need, most look to market forces and private capital to do so. What cities need to improve local broadband is a new math: one that better balances the high costs of deployment and operations against the risk of returns that don’t match costs. Revisiting the relationship between access to poles and multiple dwelling units and the deployment of next generation networks, as I have noted before, ought to be on the agenda for the next administration. But cities don’t need to wait. They should carefully follow the pioneering efforts of Louisville and Nashville to enable more efficient pole access. Moreover, to the extent they have jurisdiction, all cities should be exploring any methods that can lower the cost of deploying and operating future-proof broadband networks.

[Commentary] As the candidates lay out their plans for the country, cities and technology should be at the heart of the conversation about economic growth and social progress. They should articulate both a strategy and specific ideas about how to accelerate the ability of cities to use new technology to achieve those goals. Here are five such ideas.

1) A Presidential Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) for cities -- We need a long-term institution dedicated to helping cities understand the impact of directions in science and technology.
2) An access initiative -- As we look back at the history of communications networks, the deployment of networks capable of offering faster, better, and cheaper services always requires a new capital-allocation decision. This is generally done by a private-sector party but often follows government decisions that lower the cost of deployment or operations and/or increase potential revenue and competition. A continuing challenge, however, lies in assuring access to essential facilities.
3) A tax/next-generation network investment deal -- There is a bipartisan consensus that our tax code needs updating to reflect changes in the economy since the last comprehensive reform thirty years ago. The chances for such a bill are not high; neither are they non-material. In that light, cities should advocate that any such effort ought to be used to accelerate investment in next generation, long-term infrastructure.
4) A government IP transition with an adoption surge -- The next administration should move the United States to the top tier in e-government delivery and broadband adoption.
5) In-Q-Tel4Equity -- When the CIA came to believe it needed to be more intentional about the direction of technology, they created a venture capital fund called In-Q-Tel, opened an office in Silicon Valley, and provided venture capital to tap commercial technology. The Pentagon recently followed with its own Silicon Valley office and fund. They are investing in technology they are interested in buying, and thus they both make money on the investment side and accelerate the deployment of technology they want. The federal government should do the same to tap developing technology to address the needs of low-income communities in health, education, job training, and other areas. While there are good, voluntary existing efforts, nothing concentrates the entrepreneurs’ mind like some old-fashioned venture capital.
[Levin is a nonresident senior fellow with the Metropolitan Policy Program. This is the third in a series of three blogs on cities, technology, the next generation of urban development, and the next administration.]

[Commentary] The federal government should focus on how cities are likely to be the primary government jurisdictions on the leading edge of using new technology to transform the public sphere. The fall campaign should set an agenda for how the next administration can move the country forward by helping the cities that want to lead in this century’s city-led, global information economy. Some might argue that how cities use technology should not be a subject of a presidential election but rather be left to local campaigns. This argument is wrong for a number of reasons, including that the economic and social health of cities is the leading driver of the economic and social health of the nation. American leadership in many sectors requires world-class cities in which to work and live.

Further, cities face a subtle economic barrier to adoption of new technologies. The history of technology cost curves predicts these investments will eventually pay for themselves in service improvements. Cities, however, unlike businesses, have a limited first-user advantage for such new infrastructure, making it more difficult to obtain the critical mass of users that lowers costs in ways that accelerate adoption. If wealthier communities like Austin (TX) can figure out how to use technology to improve how it delivers education, health, transportation, and social services, those practices can be adopted by lower-income communities like Detroit (MI). The federal government has a vital interest in accelerating the improvement of municipal public services by all cities. The best way to drive such improvements is to seed early efforts that provide replicable examples.

[Levin is a nonresident senior fellow with the Metropolitan Policy Program. This is the second in a series of three blogs on cities, technology, the next generation of urban development, and the next administration.]

[Commentary] Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton recently laid out her technology plan. A number of the ideas represent the continuation and expansion of current Obama Administration strategies of increased broadband deployment and adoption. Others call for reinvigorated efforts for education and training related to technology and innovation in government. From a political perspective, the most significant policy is probably the call to protect the FCC’s decision to reclassify internet service providers as Title II common carriers, as that is one technology issue where the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has taken a clear and contrary point of view.

From the perspective of cities, however, the most significant policy may be Clinton’s endorsement of the civic Internet of Things. In a section entitled “Foster a Civic Internet of Things through Public Investments,” her plan states that her administration will invest federal research funding to testbedding, field trials, and other public-private endeavors to speed the deployment of next generation wireless networks and a civic Internet of Things. She also commits to using advances in wireless communications and data analytics to improve public safety, health care, environmental management, traffic congestion, and social welfare services. Why is this proposal so significant? The civic Internet of Things is this generation’s opportunity to recreate the commons at the heart of all cities.

[Levin is a nonresident senior fellow with the Metropolitan Policy Program. This is the first in a series of three blogs on cities, technology, the next generation of urban development, and the next administration.]

[Commentary] The National Broadband Plan has a lot of recommendations for improving the spectrum position of the mobile providers. While there have been some problems, the government has made significant progress in replenishing the empty spectrum cupboard we saw in 2009 and creating new supplies. But there are three problems with spectrum as our single strategy. First, it takes a very long time to identify spectrum bands and make them available for use. Second, the two largest wireless providers are also the two largest fixed line telcos, changing the incentives for what it would be if they were different companies. Third, the next generation of mobility, sometimes referred to as 5G, will rely on small cells, an architecture that will require greater fiber connectivity. These problems don’t mean we shouldn’t proceed, but only that we should be realistic about the timing and impact of the first leverage point of more spectrum.

Gig.U began in 2011 with three-dozen research university communities coming together to accelerate the deployment of next-generation broadband networks to enhance educational and economic development.

We believed that eliminating bandwidth as a constraint to innovation would lead to economic and social progress for our communities and accelerate the discoveries university communities create for the world. We also believed market forces by themselves would not deliver such networks on a timely basis and therefore, we ourselves had to innovate in how we approached network deployments.

We saw our task as creating test beds; what we were attempting to do -- organize communities to stimulate private investment to upgrade or overbuild existing networks -- had few precedents. This required openness to different models, some of which would hopefully succeed and some of which would likely fail.

Still, taken together, those efforts would draw a map that all communities could use to create the next wireline upgrade and achieve bandwidth abundance.