The great broadband divide: Living without high-speed internet access

As modern Americans, we count among our blessings that most of us have been able to keep going during this pandemic – working, educating our kids, consulting with our doctors – thanks to broadband Internet. That is, high-speed Internet. There's only one problem: "Tens of millions of Americans are not connected to broadband internet," said Gigi Sohn, who worked for the FCC during the Obama administration. She said the number of people who don't have broadband depends on who you ask: "If you ask the Federal Communications Commission, they'll say it's only something along the lines of 20, 23 million people, and that is a grossly undercounted number. Microsoft has done a study that showed 162 million Americans don't have broadband at the speeds that the FCC defines 'broadband.'" If you're scoring at home, that's about half the population of the United States with either very slow internet or none at all. Now, over the years, the government has come up with a basket of programs designed to help with internet affordability and accessibility. Unfortunately, Sohn said, they haven't always worked as designed. "The FCC has now, for well over a decade, paid out tens of billions of dollars to rural broadband companies to build internet access in places where there isn't any," Sohn said. "And the fact of the matter is, is that the government has gotten a very, very poor return on its investment. This FCC, and I'll even say, you know, the FCC that I worked for, has not done a very good job of demanding that these companies tell us what they've actually built with the money they've got."