Comments to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration Regarding Project LEIA

Adoption is now the primary barrier to closing the digital divide. While deployment subsidies have been the bread and butter of broadband policy for decades, now that implementation of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA’s) Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program is underway, broadband policy must retool for a future that prioritizes adoption efforts to address the leading causes of Internet non-use rather than the dwindling problem of lack of deployment. Digital inclusion efforts that can address adoption gaps are necessarily more localized and not as susceptible to purely financial solutions; high-quality, localized data is essential to customizing effective policy solutions, but their complexity does not make them less valuable. Project LEIA is an excellent opportunity to move in the right direction, and we commend NTIA for this bold approach.