A year ago, I urged us all to look beyond the $65 billion the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act sets aside for broadband and realize the importance of Congress’ recognition that access to affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband is essential to full participation in modern life in the United States. I still find this renewed and updated Congressional commitment to universal service to be astounding. We should continue to celebrate it—and continue the work that ensures this commitment becomes a reality.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed in all-too-stark terms what is at stake if we do not close the digital divide and extend digital opportunity to everyone in the U.S. Although our “Broadband Moment” may have been born to address the unmistakable gaps laid bare during the pandemic, the roots of this commitment go as far back at least to 1996 when Congress instructed the Federal Communications Commission to encourage the timely deployment of broadband.

Our choice has always been either to allow the divide to persist, holding back individuals, families, communities, and our nation—or to ensure everyone can use broadband fit for the changing world. With the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, America chooses the latter. We will all be better for it.

In the past year, implementation of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has fallen mainly on federal policymakers. They should be applauded for their steady, deliberate decisions to ensure we make the most of the opportunity and bring the benefits of broadband to all. Now the focus is increasingly shifting to state and local decisionmakers. Their planning efforts now will make or break Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act efforts.

Over the past 18 months, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society shared a number of tools to aid state and local leaders:

• Putting State Broadband Funds to Work: Best Practices In State Rural Broadband Grant Programs: A look at the remarkable innovation of states, counties, and municipalities have embraced to close the rural digital divide.
• The Future of American Farming: Broadband Solutions for the Farm Office, Field, and Community: Today, broadband is a necessary tool to innovate farming practices, allowing for more targeted and efficient resource use. Farmers need connectivity in the farmhouse and farm office, in the field, and in the community.
• The Era of the Broadband Public-Private Partnership: New trends and opportunities in the wake of COVID-19: A remarkable wave of public-private collaboration in broadband is underway.
• Accelerate: A Community Broadband Planning Program: The Accelerate community broadband planning program educates and supports community leadership teams as they create their community’s broadband vision and goals and pursue the best possible broadband solutions for their area.
• Fixed Wireless Technologies and Their Suitability for Broadband Delivery: As state and local governments and their partners plan to invest billions of dollars in federal funding to build broadband infrastructure, choosing the best technology will have significant long-term implications.
• Pathways to Digital Equity: How Communities Can Reach Their Broadband Goals—and How Philanthropy Can Help: For community leaders striving for digital equity, this guidebook will help communities evaluate and meet specific connectivity needs. We chart three pathways—Access, Adoption, and Use—that together offer a comprehensive approach to guide communities’ digital equity planning and provide structure for implementing effective solutions with the help of philanthropy.

In the coming weeks and months, you’ll see more resources coming from Benton—from envisioning how our society can be transformed by achieving digital equity to how broadband can make agriculture more productive and sustainable.

In all our efforts, we’ll be striving to help communities employ broadband to be more competitive, healthier, and better educated.

As Congress declared a year ago, achieving digital equity is a matter of social and economic justice and is worth pursuing. We are one year closer to that ideal. It remains a just-as-critical goal. And we must all continue to pursue it.

More in this Series

The Infrastructure Law is Still about More than Money

A Year One Update on the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act: Investing in Broadband Deployment

A Year One Update on the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act: Investing in Broadband Adoption

A Year One Update on the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act: Connecting Tribal Communities

A Year One Update on the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act: Making Broadband More Affordable

Adrianne B. Furniss is the Executive Director of the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.

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