Publications

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act identifies Veterans as one of eight “covered populations” and encourages states to research and address the barriers Veterans face in accessing, adopting, and benefiting from internet access and other digital technologies. Working with the Office of Connected Care in the U.S.

The historic levels of funding made available through the bipartisan Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program will generate historic levels of construction—and this will put enormous pressure on local governments.

This report highlights how the early collective efforts of residents in east-central Vermont helped make Communications Union Districts (CUDs) a statewide, scalable strategy for ensuring locally driven connectivity today.

As a Marjorie & Charles Benton Opportunity Fund Fellow, EveryoneOn CEO Norma E. Fernandez examined the digital adoption journeys of low-income Black/African American and Latina women.

Own Your Internet: How to Build a Public Broadband Network

This report follows the journey of five rural counties in Illinois (Edgar, Hancock, McLean, Ogle, and Schuyler) that enrolled in the Broadband Breakthrough community engagement and broadband planning program and used the resources and open-source tools the program provides to pursue a better broadband future. The goal of Broadband Breakthrough and this report is to help rural farming communitie

All 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico are currently working on digital equity plans. One key component of the plans is the development of states’ visions for digital equity. These efforts are the initial state-level planning and envisioning at this scale and scope.

For community leaders striving for digital equity, this guidebook will help communities evaluate and meet specific connectivity needs. We chart three pathways—Access, Adoption, and Use—that together offer a comprehensive approach to guide communities’ digital equity planning and provide structure for implementing effective solutions.

As state and local governments and their partners plan to invest billions of dollars in federal funding to build broadband infrastructure, choosing the best technology will have significant long-term implications.

The Affordable Connectivity Program represents an inflection point for Lifeline and universal service.

The goal of Project OVERCOME is to select, launch, and oversee multiple proof-of-concept broadband solutions to underserved communities.

One might think this is the moment for community broadband networks. The truth is, locally-directed networks have been serving their communities for a long, long time.

Residential and small-business customers have too few options for fixed, robust broadband service, what we refer to as “High-Performance Broadband.” Fixing our deployment and competition problems requires the construction of new broadband networks. In other words, we need more competition, and we need more broadband deployment.

Recommendations for a National Broadband Agenda | Contributions to a National Broadband Agenda

Broadband for America Now | Broadband for America’s Future: A Vision for the 2020s

If We Build It, Will They Come? Lessons from Open-Access, Middle-Mile Networks

“Middle-skill” jobs make up a large portion of the market, has positions to fill, but suffers from a dearth of trained workers—especially when it comes to digital skills.

This publication is a part of a discussion on how public policy can close the digital divide and extend digital opportunity everywhere.

There are well-paying job opportunities for those on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum for so-called middle-skill jobs. These are jobs that generally do not require a college degree and pay a living wage. Roughly half of all job openings in the United States fall into the middle-skill category and most (82%) of them require digital skills – and wages are better as a result.

Combining state-of-the-technologies with traditional and new media, Benton's Campaigns for Kids in the mid-1990's reinvented fulfillment for PSA campaigns in the digital age by replacing 800 phone numbers and brochures with multimedia websites to provide information and resources for action.

This report describes the challenges facing community-based organizations and other key stakeholders in using outcomes-based evaluation to measure the success of their digital inclusion programs and offers recommendations toward addressing these shared barriers.

This is a handbook for city officials seeking the affordable, abundant bandwidth their communities will need to thrive in the decades ahead.

With library systems increasingly prioritizing equitable access to the Internet and digital literacy training, the role 21st-century libraries serve in promoting digital inclusion has become more prominent.