Affordability/Cost/Price

Inclusion is at the foundation of communications policy in this country. The Communications Act of 1934 and the Telecommunications Act of 1996 both rest on the notion that advanced communications networks should be universally available and affordable. The COVID-19 pandemic shows that there is still more to be done to adapt these policy principles to the internet age. In just two decades, having the internet at home has gone from being a toy for hobbyists to an indispensable tool for commerce, education, and connectedness.

There are 45,000 households in Charlotte (NC) without a subscription to broadband Internet. Unlike rural swaths of the state, the city is rich in infrastructure and competition from service providers. Across North Carolina, about 20% of homes have no Internet subscription, but in certain urban neighborhoods, that number is more than doubled.

The dual crises of changing census guidelines and the COVID-19 pandemic have shined a “great spotlight” on the impact that lack of access to broadband has in rural communities. “Access to education, access to jobs, it’s one of those areas where the whole partnership between business and government needs to happen, because it’s not going to be cheap,” said Lynden Schuyler, a director for census outreach at the Illinois Public Health Association.

Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) led a group of 25 senators in calling on the Federal Communications Commission to boost its Lifeline program to keep students connected as millions return to school both virtually and in person. Since 1985, the FCC’s Lifeline program has made basic internet and telephone service more affordable for low-income Americans and has had bipartisan support.

How did the birthplace of the internet become a nation where broadband is unavailable to large chunks of the population, keeping students from taking part fully in modern education and their parents from taking advantage of the modern economy? Big investments have been made in the internet in the U.S., but not uniformly or with an eye to expanding connectivity as far as possible. It’s not a task that private industry cares to take on, nor is it one that the public sector can solve on its own—not in a country with such a strident free-market ethos.

About as far west as you can go in the US before hitting Russia lies the string of Aleutian Islands. It's where the Discovery Channel's The Deadliest Catch is filmed and where most fish destined for restaurants in the continental US gets processed.  A tiny school system in the region, the Aleutians East Borough School District, educates 230 students across four schools. About 85% of the kids are Alaska Native. Traveling between the four schools requires flights on twin-engine planes or, in one case, a flight followed by a helicopter ride.

The Benton perspective is this: Everyone in America should be able to use High-Performance Broadband, by which I mean broadband connections to the home that are robust and future-proof. Broadband competition is more important than ever because—in our current crises and beyond—America has fast-forwarded into its broadband future. Yet, New York, like the nation, has too little competition in fixed broadband to ensure that all people have the advantage of competitive pricing, quality, customer service, and innovation.

With the increase in remote learning due to COVID-10, the City of Chicago, Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the philanthropic community, and leading Internet Service Providers (ISPs) recognized a historic opportunity to eliminate broadband accessibility as a barrier to digital learning. On June 25, 2020, Mayor Lori E.

As much as the pandemic is a challenge, the urgency it presents also provides an opportunity to finally make significant progress on these digital issues. To get started and provide a framework for future action, I recommend focusing on the following:

With the start of the school year just around the corner, thousands of Minnesota students still don’t have access to reliable high-speed internet — meaning that many will begin another year of at least part-time distance learning with spotty service or no internet connection at all.  Low-income students, rural students and students of color are disproportionately likely to lack reliable internet access, raising concerns that the digital divide will worsen Minnesota’s educational disparities, which are already some of the worst in the nation. Roughly 25,000 Minnesota students didn’t have com