US students are being asked to work remotely. But 22% of homes don't have internet

Nationwide, approximately 22% of households don’t have home internet, including more than 4 million households with school-age children. Poor families and people of color are particularly impacted – only 56% of households making less than $20,000 have home broadband, and black and Hispanic households lag behind their white counterparts even when we control for income differences. Even among students who theoretically have access, not all access is equal. According to census research, 8% of households who have internet rely exclusively on mobile broadband. Once again, low-income people and communities of color are disproportionately more likely to be mobile-only broadband adopters. This also has particular impacts on students – only about half of school-age children who live in mobile-only households personally use the internet at home, perhaps because of the difficulty of sharing mobile devices. And while it’s better than being completely disconnected, mobile-only access isn’t ideal. Mobile services are often limited by data caps, and mobile devices can make certain tasks incredibly challenging. Imagine studying for your calculus exam or writing a world-history paper on a cellphone. This is a reality for a lot of students who don’t have home broadband. Despite what you might hear from some folks in Congress, the digital divide isn’t just about rural communities, or people who don’t adopt broadband because they “just don’t get it”. In fact, study after study shows that people don’t have internet because they can’t afford it, and because systemic racial discrimination blocks them from subscribing.

While students and their families grapple with this sudden dramatic shift to online learning, policymakers and internet service providers must act. Free Press has called on all internet service providers to suspend data caps and overage fees, pause service disconnections, expand low-cost services, and even to waive billing for those hardest hit by the novel coronavirus and the social distancing required to contain it. Some ISPs are taking up the call, but there’s still much more that companies and policymakers can and should do to bridge the digital divide in this moment of crisis. We need public policies that bring real price competition to ensure universally affordable broadband access.

[Dana Floberg is the policy manager at the nonpartisan advocacy group Free Press]