Op-Ed

As incoming Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, I’m making the case that broadband needs to be at the center of any infrastructure or relief package Congress passes in 2021. It is not dreaming too big to demand, right now: Every community should be connected to the twenty-first century shipping lane and communications pipeline—the Internet.

The Biden Administration’s goals of restoring a functional federal government, driving economic recovery, and “building back better” lend themselves to a new strategy for universalizing broadband, with a three-pronged approach to directly address each of the barriers I have described that have stalled universal access. First, any significant plan for investing in infrastructure must include sufficient funding in the form of grants and loans for both initial capital investment and ongoing operations and maintenance of universal, future-proofed broadband networks. Second, the Administration s

Universal broadband is the 21^st century equivalent of electrification, foundational to equity and economic prosperity in urban and rural communities alike.

Digital literacy is the key component of democratizing the internet. A digitally-literate person has the technical skills to navigate the internet. A digitally-literate person is also media literate, with the ability to critically evaluate the content received and consumed online. Unless we train ourselves, and particularly our children, how to understand and use the internet, it can never realize its vast potential to serve the common good. We must be a digitally literate people. We are not that now. We need to be a digitally literate and media literate people.

People of color and low-income communities have been disproportionately harmed by both the COVID-19 virus and the economic recession.

COVID19 has opened our eyes to a new possibility.  Give people a choice of where to live – one that does not depend on where they make their living – and they vote with their feet for lower density, more green space and, most of all, for affordable costs. It has become clear that the celebrated “magnet cities” are threatened by their own success.  They are dangerously overcrowded.  They are vastly over-priced for all but the most over-paid.  That’s why San Francisco and Manhattan have only half the number of children per household as the US metropolitan average, while suburbs and e

A high-stakes auction of government-owned airwaves to mobile broadband providers is set to drop a record windfall exceeding $80 billion into the US Treasury. Two additional auctions of wireless frequency bands, called spectrum, are on tap for 2021 and slated to follow the same course. The nation has become painfully aware of the digital divides that are widening inequality, slowing productivity, and impeding innovation.

Right out of the gate, President Joe Biden has identified two main priorities: fighting the Covid-19 pandemic and promoting inclusive economic recovery. These are difficult tasks by any measure, but fortunately, meeting another major challenge unites both goals: universal and affordable broadband.

Internet access is something that many took for granted, until the pandemic. Living through COVID-19 has laid bare the unaddressed digital inequities that are impacting millions of lives. The digital divide is becoming a digital chasm: limited or no access to affordable high-speed internet is leaving far too many people behind. The California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF), the only foundation focusing on digital equity for all 40 million Californians, has been informing state and national policy and working on the ground with hundreds of community-based organizations for 15 years.

Much is made of the digital divide, but little has been done to eradicate it. To help solve this problem, we need to get more underrepresented communities into careers in computing and engineering, especially data science. More, and different, perspectives can only help lead to better products and services. At the same time, we can truly advance a Black and brown middle class, and create generational wealth, boosting economic growth and providing an entire new set of industries and opportunities across the nation.