Dollars to Megabits, You May Be Paying 400 Times As Much As Your Neighbor for Internet Service

AT&T, Verizon, EarthLink, and CenturyLink disproportionately offered the worst internet deals to neighborhoods that were formerly redlined, whose residents are lower income and have a higher concentration of people of color than other parts of the city. The findings are based on an examination of actual internet offers to more than 800,000 addresses in 38 cities across the country. People in disadvantaged neighborhoods would be offered plans as high as $100 per megabit per second, while those in more affluent areas that have more White residents and had the best historical redlining scores were offered plans for less than $1 per Mbps. The ultimate effect of these practices went beyond fairness: Those in disadvantaged neighborhoods were offered speeds so slow that they were denied the ability to participate in remote learning, jobs, and even family connection and recreation that are ubiquitous to modern life. A recent Pew survey, for example, showed 90 percent of respondents saying the internet has been “essential or important for them personally during the coronavirus outbreak.”