The battle to stop broadband discrimination has only just begun

For the better part of a generation, low-income and minority US communities have struggled to gain access to affordable broadband. It’s not an accident: numerous studies indicate that major internet service providers have consistently avoided low-income, minority, and tribal neighborhoods when it comes to affordable fiber upgrades, and federal policymakers haven't historically done much about it. The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act tasked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with crafting new rules taking aim at “digital discrimination.” On November 15, 2023 the FCC passed rules banning internet service providers from broadband discrimination based on income, race, and religion. Digital equity advocates have celebrated the FCC's decision to include disparate impacts (inequity in deployment, regardless of intent), but many have also expressed concerns about weaknesses in the rules. “Nothing in these rules would address historical, existing and the ongoing redlining and discrimination against BIPOC and low income communities by large corporate ISPs,” said Brandon Forester, a media and telecommunications reform activist at MediaJustice. Forester also criticized the lack of transparency in the new FCC complaint process. Whether the FCC’s digital discrimination protections can begin to truly repair generations of injustice remains unclear.