Community Anchor Institutions

The Public Library Association (PLA) and Microsoft announced a new initiative to increase access to technology in rural communities during the COVID-19 crisis. Microsoft will provide funding to help public libraries in rural communities extend Wi-Fi access by installing public Wi-Fi access points on or near library grounds. According to a recent survey of public library responses to COVID-19, less than 40 percent of public libraries have located Wi-Fi access points outside their buildings, and only 8 percent reported trying to expand that service.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced a lockdown of millions of people around the world, and New York, where schools have been shut down since March 16, and teachers and students have resorted to distance learning with online classes. But Larissa Rosa, an English-as-a-second-language teacher at Public School 7 Samuel Stern in the East Harlem neighborhood of New York, said at least 45 of the roughly 400 students at her school haven't logged on once.

The principles we need to connect us were enshrined by a Republican-led Congress in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. In the legislation, overwhelmingly approved by both Republicans and Democrats, the law mandates that the Federal Communications Commission to base policies for the preservation and advancement of universal service on principles including:

Here are five ideas about what the Federal Communications Commission can do, right now, to keep us as a country moving forward:

The debate on whether broadband is a luxury or an essential connection to society is over. More than twice as many people are now using residential broadband during business hours as before the COVID-19 crisis. Over 55 million students have been impacted by school closures. The use of telehealth has skyrocketed. This, I believe, is our broadband moment: a hinge of history that will determine whether today’s residential broadband is fit for the changed world in which we inhabit or whether its limits work to disadvantage those that are not equipped to use it.

Home-schooling looks a little different for some families across the country, especially those who can't afford unlimited internet access. Tawana Brown of South Bend, Indiana begins each day by driving her family to a parking lot where school buses that are equipped with Wi-Fi are parked. She has been keeping up with this daily schedule after coronavirus concerns led to the closure of schools in the South Bend school district.

The lack of affordable residential broadband reflects a failure of US broadband policy. The National Broadband Plan of 2010 called for ubiquitous, affordable, high-speed broadband for all by the year 2020. Depending on which measure you use, the U.S. has fallen short by 10% to 50%. We are now suffering the consequences – residential broadband is often slow, expensive, and not universally available.

House Health Subcommittee Chairwoman Anna G. Eshoo (D-CA) and Rep Don Young (R-AK) introduced H.R. 6474, the Healthcare Broadband Expansion During COVID-19 Act, a bipartisan bill to provide $2 billion to expand telehealth and high-quality internet connectivity at public and nonprofit healthcare facilities, including mobile clinics and temporary health facilities deployed to respond to the coronavirus pandemic. Healthcare providers pay an average of over $40,000 per year for broadband connectivity.

When we think of the homework gap, we tend to think of grade school to high school and omit the 19.9 million postsecondary students across the country.