Benton Institute for Broadband & Society

People living in rural Kansas have been concerned about their lack of access to reliable broadband for over 20 years. As part of a second wave of Capital Projects Fund awards, Kansas will receive $83.5 million from the US Department of the Treasury to increase access to affordable, reliable, high-speed internet. According to BroadbandNow, 15 percent of households in Kansas have no access to the internet. Kansas ranks 35th among states in internet coverage, speed and availability.

In November 2021, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, Black Brilliance Research Project (BBR), and Community Informatics Lab at Simmons University launched the six-city Digital Equity Action Research (DEAR) Fellowship. The DEAR Fellowship helped young adults, ages 19–24, learn participatory action research skills to examine and address the root causes of digital inequities in their communities. Participatory Action Research (PAR) is different from traditional research paradigms.

It’s time to look anew at individual rights and to broaden our discussion of them to include where we have sometimes gone wrong in safeguarding those rights. This demands more than just questioning court nominees about stare decisis, important as that may be. This is a discussion for we, the people to be involved in. As we ponder the inroads the current high court is making into areas where it really has little writ to intervene, let’s wake up to the fact that its actions are tossing real Constitutionalism out the door, on both policy and process. I say this not to disparage.

For years, people have quietly endured exploitative and increasingly expensive internet services while relying on crumbling infrastructure. That all changed recently when a new local cooperative built internet infrastructure in Southwest Detroit. This new internet option, a point-to-point mesh network, is run by organizers from Grace in Action. Created in 2015, the program is called the Equitable Internet Initiative (EII) and is a partnership with the Detroit Community Technology Project.

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.

To aid state and local policymakers, this report offers an engineering analysis of fixed-wireless technologies and their suitability for delivering broadband service in various environments. The report addresses a range of critical technology and cost considerations related to fixed-wireless networks—and, as a point of comparison, to fiber-to-the-premises networks. At a high level, the report concludes the following:

The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) helps low-income families and individuals ease the financial burden of making tough choices between paying for groceries and other household necessities or paying for high-speed internet service. The funds that the ACP provides for eligible households to afford high-speed internet access can help level the playing field for low-income families and individuals by increasing their access to educational, employment, and entrepreneurship opportunities; civic engagement; telehealth services; and more.

The Roman philosopher Seneca said that good luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. In what the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society has called “our broadband moments,” preparation requires bold community leadership that moves a community to gather data and build trusted relationships allowing them to be ready to act when opportunity arises. President Biden has pledged to make sure that every American has access to reliable, affordable, high-speed internet. Full participation in our twenty-first century economy requires no less.

As of June 2022, the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) has been live for six months, providing monthly discounts on the internet bills and device costs of over 12.4 million households in the United States.

If the federal government’s investments in broadband connectivity are to be effective, different programmatic pieces must work together. Broadband infrastructure funds are necessary to ensuring universal access, but not sufficient to achieve full digital equity. Equitable broadband adoption depends on people having the financial means to maintain service, which the Affordable Connectivity Plan (ACP) facilitates, as well as access to wrap-around digital inclusion services (such as tech support and skills training).