Broadband Networks Are Doing Well, Time to Shift to Adoption Gap

It turns out there are two digital divides in America. The first one is the familiar divide between those who have Internet subscriptions and those who don’t. Everyone agrees this is a persistent concern, with about 10 percent of the public lacking subscriptions at the last count. But then we come to the second divide: There is a perennial policy debate over why the digital divide exists and what to do about it. This second digital divide is once again on full display around the latest edition of the biennial Communications Marketplace Report from the Federal Communications Commission. An evenhanded look at broadband data shows that US broadband infrastructure is not the problem; it’s a lack of adoption that’s causing the digital divide to persist. It’s one thing to have access to broadband service but another to “adopt” — to sign up for and purchase — that service. The US has room for improvement when it comes to adoption. Though US adoption rates are not appallingly low, they still lag behind the country’s performance in deployment. In other words, a substantial percentage of Americans, given the opportunity to connect to the Internet, simply chooses not to. While a simplistic policy solution would throw money at the problem to lower prices, that likely wouldn’t make a significant dent in the adoption rate. The US Commerce Department’s Internet Use Survey finds, instead, that the main barrier to connectivity is a lack of interest, with 58 percent of respondents stating so. Meanwhile, the price comes in a distant second, with only 18 percent of respondents putting it down as their answer.

[Jessica Dine is a research assistant for broadband policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.]