Deseret News

New pandemic-induced dependence on robust internet connectivity has shone a light on the stark inequities of broadband access and helped spur a new focus on addressing a long-standing question — why isn’t internet service a public utility with the same support, disbursement, and regulation afforded to other basic necessities like water, electricity and telephone service? While federal COVID-19 relief funding has helped Utah school administrators navigate some of the challenges raised by pandemic-related remote learning, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Sydnee Dickson said much mor

Rep. John Curtis (R-UT) hosted an invite-only roundtable discussion, hoping to gather stakeholder input on how to best address efforts to maintain an appropriately open internet system. "We tried to get every position represented in the room," said Rep. Curtis. "We had (internet service providers), edge providers and both large and small tech businesses.

Just a few years ago, life was dramatically different for 38-year-old Washington (DC) resident Behrooz Bakhtiary. Bakhtiary was a single father working odd jobs as a security guard, a club bouncer and a hotel concierge to pay child support when his 5-year-old daughter, Therela, was diagnosed with leukemia. Looking for a job online meant time spent walking to a public library to get access to a computer and the Internet to search for jobs — time that was hard to come by while already working full-time and trying to raise a 5-year-old. For millions of Americans, this Catch-22 is known as the digital divide — a term that once applied to people without Internet access but now refers to a spectrum of people whose lives are impacted by the limitations of Internet access.

Ironically, many experts argue that those trapped in the digital divide struggle to get out because of technology’s impact on the job market. “There are fewer and fewer jobs where you don’t have to interact with any type of technology,” Brookings Institute senior fellow Martha Ross said. Educational opportunities around technology are important because as the number of jobs that don’t require much formal education has ebbed, education has struggled to give students the skills they need to keep up with the pace of technology changes. While public schools and colleges argue over how soon some technology skills, such as coding, should be implemented into curriculum (some say children should start before they enter school), people who are not digital natives need stop-gap education in the meantime.