Op-Ed

In this series, the Benton Foundation and the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) explore the origins, strategies, challenges and funding mechanisms for successful digital inclusion organizations. In this article, we examine E2D, also known as Eliminate the Digital Divide -- a nonprofit in Charlotte (NC) that began with a focus on closing the homework gap. The mission of E2D is to ensure that all students have affordable access to essential at-home technology and digital literacy training to support academic success and prepare students for college, careers, and beyond.

The City of Tacoma (WA) is engaged in an effort to ensure that our public broadband network, Click!, continues to support our community well for decades to come. My colleagues and I recognize that we, like all American cities, stand on the front lines of efforts to achieve equity and opportunity. And, as broadband internet becomes a more critical foundational element of our economy and a vital tool for democratic engagement, our efforts must extend to ensuring it is deployed in a way that supports our efforts.

In part, the Congressional urgency to act on network neutrality is being driven by INCOMPAS’s strong day in court earlier in 2019. We are petitioners, along with leading consumer groups and states, in the legal fight to overturn the Federal Communications Commission’s controversial decision to end decades of bipartisan net neutrality policy. As we near some critical votes in Congress, it’s crucial not to be distracted or confused by the big Internet service provider’s attempts to muddy the waters on net neutrality. Here’s what to look out for:

Day in, day out, the @WhiteHouse Twitter account shills for President Donald Trump, coordinating messages that cast his presidency in a positive light. But @WhiteHouse, which has over 18 million followers, doesn’t just share policy accomplishments and favorable statistics: it aims snarky put-downs at Trump’s critics and the news media, and retweets some of the president’s most concerning anti-press attacks. While journalists obsess over the @realDonaldTrump account’s every missive, @WhiteHouse goes mostly under the radar.

USTelecom is leading the charge on a new, more precise, approach to broadband reporting and mapping. We have proposed to Congress and regulatory agencies a method to create a public-private partnership to map America's broadband infrastructure so policymakers and providers can better target scarce funding to communities with limited or no service options. Currently, the Federal Communications Commission collects some deployment data from broadband providers by census block.

After each misdeed becomes public, Facebook alternates between denial, hollow promises and apology campaigns. As chairman of the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law, I am calling for an investigation into whether Facebook’s conduct has violated antitrust laws. Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the Federal Trade Commission has confirmed that it is investigating Facebook to determine whether it violated a consent order it entered into with the commission in 2011.

On Feb 12, 2019 Sen Kevin Cramer (R-ND) introduced The Office of Rural Broadband Act in the Senate (S 454), which would establish an Office of Rural Broadband in the Federal Communications Commission. Sen Cramer’s Office of Rural Broadband Act is the latest effort to coordinate rural broadband planning and policy. As I recently wrote for the New York Times, this Office of Rural Broadband is best placed inside the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) of the US Dept of Agriculture, rather than the Federal Communications Commission, as S.454 proposes.

On March 12, 2019, I was honored to appear before the Senate Communications Subcommittee to testify on “The Impact of Broadband Investments in Rural America.” I provided my personal views, bringing the perspective of a former government official with 22 years of experience at the Federal Communications Commission and National Telecommunications and Information Administration, with the last decade focused on the FCC’s Connect America Fund. My five-minute opening statement follows:

“The four elements of literacy—the ability to find, understand, create and act on information—are part of the ‘new literacies’ of the modern era: information literacy, digital literacy, media literacy and news literacy. … No one is born with these literacies. Education matters,” writes the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication’s Eric Newton for the Knight Commission on Trust, Media, and Democracy. "Whose job is it to help a community understand news?” Journalism is an inextricable component of a healthy democracy.

I have a bad case of news blues. Journalism is fast becoming a vast wasteland. Newsrooms across the land are hollowed out, or in many cases shuttered.