The Internet After COVID-19: Will We Mind the Gaps?

When it comes to the Internet, the COVID-19 crisis is teaching us that we’re so much better off than we could have been, but not as good as we need to be. COVID-19 is a stress test for many systems in the United States, most critically in our health, government, education, media, retail and financial services sectors. All of them are now depending more than ever on the Internet to serve their users. The current health crisis will likely peak some time this year, but our intensified reliance on digital technology will not. After the crisis, the challenge for policymakers and industry leaders will be to analyze the results of that stress test and take whatever actions they require, including more efforts to close the digital divide. We propose an initiative that combines the best of the admirable 9/11 Commission and the 2010 National Broadband Plan (NBP). The first was a response to a crisis, while the latter delivered responses to avoid a crisis. We need both kinds of inquiries. The new initiative should take what we’ve learned, both from the current crisis and otherwise, and use it to address areas where critical gaps remain:

• Performance gaps -- we’ll need to determine more specifically how the network performed, and if any weak links were found.
• Coverage gaps -- problems remain both in terms of access and adoption.
• Security gaps -- as we move more office work, education, and socializing to the home on a permanent basis, we need to reevaluate network security.
• Utilization gaps -- many industries and government services have not digitized fast enough.
• Informantion gaps -- we need to learn how, in any future crisis, our society can reduce the pollution of misinformation.

[Blair Levin is a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and was the Executive Director of the 2010 National Broadband Plan. Larry Downes is the author or co-author of several books on the digital economy.]