America, Disconnected: What’s Biden’s Plan for Averting Digital Disaster?

As millions of Americans prepare to lose their internet connection, the Biden administration has been caught flat-footed, failing to articulate a robust plan to avert the looming connectivity crisis. The Biden Administration’s connectivity strategy continues the US government’s neoliberal aversion to creating and funding public options for the internet. As a result, the country’s primary mechanism for connecting the unconnected is directing users to corporate internet service providers’ (ISPs) low-income plans. In fact, ACP has strengthened the country’s dependence on commercial ISPs, which have an effective monopoly on low-income internet plans, driving more subscribers to the very companies that have failed to connect the country’s most marginalized communities in the first place. The market for internet service is broken. The cost of internet plans throughout the US is high because telecom corporations face little competition and prioritize maximizing profits over connecting low-income neighborhoods. The Biden Administration should commit to a vision of truly universal internet access across the US. If corporate ISPs are intent on disconnecting Americans ends, then the Biden Administration needs to connect low-income residents outside of the prevailing corporate, commercial model.

[David Elliot Berman is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Media, Inequality and Change Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Pawel Popiel is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Media, Inequality and Change Center.]