Op-Ed

For the children and families who don’t have reliable internet access, help has finally arrived. The Emergency Connectivity Fund, launched by the Federal Communications Commission in July 2021, is the country’s largest program ever to help students get the internet access they need at home to participate fully in virtual school.

Federal action is making significant new resources available to states and localities for broadband programs. The magnitude of this funding enables cities of all sizes to consider bold investments in broadband infrastructure. Where private internet service providers (ISPs) failed to provide adequate service, cities often turn to municipal fiber to the premises (FTTP) models. With the government becoming both infrastructure owner and service provider, these approaches enable municipalities to design networks that serve their residents and achieve policy objectives.

USA Cares and Connected Nation are asking leaders to consider using a portion of the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund–which recently allocated $350 billion across states, territories and tribal governments to use for pandemic-related economic recovery activities–to provide immediate relief and long-term support for veterans and military spouses. USA Cares works daily with veterans struggling with financial needs and other challenges that made adapting to life outside the military difficult. Connected Nation, dedicated to helping local communities, states, and federal agencie

It is critical that the truth about open-access municipal broadband networks be told: They work; they are successful; they spur competition; they are closing the digital divide. They also are an irritant to big cable and its allies, whose henchmen have been busy at work in a well-financed lobbying campaign. Municipal fiber is hugely successful in Utah, even in his own district. In fact, Utah, one of the most politically conservative states in the nation, has more municipal broadband networks than elsewhere in the US.

The Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition released a set of Pole Attachment Principles to Expedite Broadband Deployment to Anchor Institutions and Their Communities. We must reform the outdated, lengthy and costly process of attaching broadband cables to utility poles. Utility poles are the backbone of the nation’s critical broadband infrastructure and play a particularly important role in connecting rural residents and anchors to reliable, high-speed internet.

July 2021 brings us things to celebrate, things to denigrate, and things to absolutely deplore. On the good side, we have come to see that high-speed broadband has become an essential component of modern-day infrastructure. The ambitious broadband proposals of the Biden Administration have rightly gained strong public support, not just in one party, but both. We are also witnessing the reinvigoration of public agencies to protect the public interest, something Biden made clear in his Executive Order on competition.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill is still far from a done deal, but after the political wrangling over what is and isn’t “infrastructure,” at least one area of firm bipartisan agreement has emerged: broadband digital access is infrastructure, but if the US lags behind our economy will not remain competitive. The broad agreement on broadband for all is a positive, overdue development. But by itself, without better digital norms and governance, universal broadband access in the US won’t do much to secure Americans’ digital rights, equitably distributed economic growth, or stronger competiti

As President Biden and Congress debate a $1.2 [tr]illion infrastructure bill that includes a historic investment in broadband, it’s an important moment to question what we mean by digital equity and what it will take to achieve it.

Social media has become as central to free speech as town meeting halls, newspapers and television networks were in prior generations. The internet is the new public square. In recent years, however, Big Tech platforms have become increasingly brazen and shameless in censoring and discriminating against ideas, information and people on social media—banning users, deplatforming organizations, and aggressively blocking the free flow of information on which our democracy depends. This flagrant attack on free speech is doing terrible damage to our country.

Nearly one-fourth of American households lack broadband access. A water main breaks every two minutes. With child-care costs soaring, more than 1 million workers—largely women—have been driven out of the economy, even as the economy reopens. Are Democrats ready to act? That is the critical question as Congress returns from its holiday break. While President Biden is selling the bipartisan infrastructure deal as a “generational investment,” the real effort will come from using the budget reconciliation process to pass vitally needed public investments with Democratic votes only.