Living Without Broadband In 2015: How 55 Million Americans Find Jobs, Study, Watch YouTube

For Americans who lack reliable broadband service at home, some of life’s most basic tasks -- paying bills, applying for jobs, taking tests and the like -- often require trips to a library or Internet café at all hours. New York City, the town with the world’s largest free public Wi-Fi plan, had people huddled in a Midtown Manhattan branch shortly before closing time on a recent Thursday to use the Internet. Some were there because their own computers were stolen or broken. For others, the library’s silent nooks are an escape between work and home. But for a good many, such as a 60-year-old Washington Heights resident Nicole Tanis, the library’s system is a necessity. She is one who does not pay for and cannot fathom affording broadband Internet at home on her income from Social Security and doing small tasks online. And in 2015, living without reliable access to the Web is, while not quite impossible, highly disadvantageous in myriad ways large and small.

Many companies’ hiring process now start with the Web, in some cases exclusively. “If you go to a gas station today and you ask for an application for a job, they’ll tell you to submit it online. You go to a Subway. Target. They’re all processing those applications online,” said Edyael Casaperalta, a research fellow at the Washington, DC-based nonprofit Public Knowledge. And some of the most accessible jobs for those who lack college or high school diplomas, such as telemarketing from home, require a broadband connection. As more and more aspects of life move online, the greater the risk that those on the wrong side of the digital divide will fall further behind. The feds are hoping to prevent that. A proposal from the Federal Communications Commission seeks to update the government’s 30-year-old aid program for telephone plans, called Lifeline, to include broadband Internet. The proposal calls for an expansion of the number of providers in the program and the inclusion of minimum standards for dependable, high-speed Internet access. “As communications technologies and markets evolve, the Lifeline program also has to evolve to remain relevant,” FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler wrote.