Purdue University

Despite these limitations, the digital inclusion indicators and metrics that we have analyzed do offer some insights on the steps that leaders and practitioners should consider in their community, economic, and workforce development efforts. They include:

Digital distress is defined as census tracts that have a higher percent of homes not subscribing to the internet or subscribing only through a cellular data plan as well as a higher percent of homes with no computing devices or relying only on mobile devices, no laptops or desktops. About 8.1 percent of the upper Midwest’s population (or 4.3 million people) lived in digitally distressed areas as of 2017.

As of 2017, about 1.7 million housing units in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin did not have access to 25/3 affecting 3.5 million residents. Michigan had the highest share (25.5 percent) of housing units in the region with no 25/3 access, followed by Illinois (17.6 percent) and Wisconsin (17.2 percent). Minnesota had the lowest share, with less than 10 percent of the total.

While research on the impact of broadband continues to increase, a broad understanding of what being digital ready entails is missing. This study—based on a 1,214 nonrepresentative household survey weighted by income, age, and educational attainment—developed a digital readiness index (DRI) score based on three related but distinct dimensions: device & internet access (DIA), digital resourcefulness and utilization (DRU), and internet benefits and impact (IBI).

This paper projects the statewide net benefits that could be obtained from installation of rural broadband in all of the areas served by Rural Electric Member Cooperatives (REMC) in the state of Indiana. This analysis draws heavily upon an initial analysis that was done for the Tipmont Cooperative. Then six additional Indiana REMCs were added, although with somewhat less precision than the original Tipmont analysis.

The digital divide is the most critical issue of the 21st century – so this report sets out to talk about why it’s so critical and how we can close the divide. Why do we need to close the digital divide?

Broadband and the digital applications it makes possible are impacting residents, businesses, and governments alike.