Lessons From State Broadband Grants Before The Pandemic

Despite increased reliance on access to high-capacity and reliable broadband Internet for everyday activities, disparities in fixed broadband availability persist. States’ broadband programs are part of the effort to close the infrastructure gap, which has been linked to geographic, demographic, socio-economic, market, and policy factors. However, the pandemic is prompting a shift in broadband policy—with the concept of “access” being expanded to address both disparities in coverage and digital equity concerns. Our report, “Closing the Broadband Infrastructure Gap: State Grant Funds and the Digital Divide,” examines pre-pandemic data of state broadband grants in 17 states, collected by The Pew Charitable Trusts. While state broadband programs each have their own priorities and strategies when distributing funds, we explore the overall trends in how funds were distributed, and discuss the implications of our results for digital equity and states’ role in closing the digital divide. What can we learn from how states have allocated funds in the past years?

[Natassia Bravo is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University. Her research focuses on the role of local government and the impact of state regulation on rural broadband deployment in the US. Mildred E. Warner is a Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and the Department of Global Development at Cornell. They were awarded a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts in 2022, and received the Charles Benton Broadband & Society Prize in September 2023 at TPRC51.]