In the next decade, everyone in America should be able to use High-Performance Broadband. Today, millions of people in the U.S. have no access to robust broadband networks. One essential building block for broadband policy for the next century is encouraging broadband adoption.

For many Americans, lack of broadband access means having less opportunity than their parents did. This is not just a digital divide—this is another America. An America whose finances are precarious—and disadvantaged by long-term tectonic economic trends. A place that is often isolated—especially in rural America. An America where the local fast-food restaurant and the public library may offer the best choices for broadband. It is an America with less opportunity.

Broadband’s fundamental value doesn’t come from connecting computers to networks; it comes from connecting people to opportunity, and society to new solutions. When a network is available but a person who wants to use it can’t do so, then the network is less valuable to everyone who uses it.

Broadband adoption benefits people in concrete and practical ways. Children can do homework at home. Parents can become more involved in their child’s school. Families can stream educational content. Adults can obtain digital skills training, including workforce skills, and create résumés. Americans with disabilities can establish better access to education, employment, health care, and community activities. Far too many people face practical barriers in using broadband service that they want and that is ostensibly available to them. Academic research has established that socioeconomic factors impact broadband usage.

Local leadership is crucial in both identifying digital divides and combating them. As a nation, we also must set long-term goals to ensure that High-Performance Broadband is fully and realistically available to everyone in America.

To achieve more equitable and effective broadband use, we review:

• The inability of lower-income people to afford broadband connections;
• Community efforts to increase the skills that people need to effectively use broadband connections; and
• The critical link between digital-inclusion efforts and broader economic and social strategies.

For more details and recommendations on broadband adoption see  Broadband for America's Future: A Vision for the 2020s. And please sign up for updates around the report.

Jonathan Sallet is a Benton Senior Fellow. He works to promote broadband access and deployment, to advance competition, including through antitrust, and to preserve and protect internet openness. He is the former-Federal Communications Commission General Counsel (2013-2016), and Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Litigation, Antitrust Division, US Department of Justice (2016-2017). 

The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring that all people in the U.S. have access to competitive, High-Performance Broadband regardless of where they live or who they are. We believe communication policy - rooted in the values of access, equity, and diversity - has the power to deliver new opportunities and strengthen communities.

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Broadband Delivers Opportunities and Strengthens Communities