Too Poor to Afford the Internet

[Commentary] In New York City, with broadband costing on average $55 per month, 25 percent of all households and 50 percent of those making less than $20,000 lack this service at home.

People line up, sometimes for hours, to use the library system’s free computers. Go into any library in the nation and you’ll most likely see the same thing. They come to do what so many of us take for granted: apply for government services, study or do research, talk with family or friends, inform themselves as voters, and just participate in our society and culture — so much of which now takes place online. Our public libraries are charged with providing free access to information, and in recent years we have had to create new ways of doing that. Leaking broadband (frankly, accidentally) onto the branch stoops is not enough.

In 2014, working with Mayor Bill de Blasio, and with support from Google and the Knight, Open Society and Robin Hood Foundations, we were able to let our patrons “check out” the internet. Yet we need help from more than libraries. Another, bolder approach, would be to create Wi-Fi for large geographic areas. I know there are technological hurdles to providing universal broadband. But the commitment I’m asking for isn’t particularly novel.

[Anthony W. Marx is the president of the New York Public Library.]