Digital Divide

Late in Aug, the US Department of Agriculture announced plans to add $600 million to fund e-Connectivity, a pilot program aimed at bridging the rural digital divide by improving broadband internet access for American farmers. But the rural digital divide is wider than ever, as farmers struggle to run tech-dependent businesses without broadband. On the farm, spotty or limited internet coverage can be a costly problem.

GOP nominee for Gov of TN Bill Lee may run a $225 million-a-year business and live in the wealthiest county in TN, but when he connects to the internet at his cattle farm in Fernvale (TN), he has to use a satellite dish. "Like a lot of rural areas, we still don't have broadband and when there is a storm, we play a lot of Yahtzee at home," Lee said. But Lee said the lack of access to high-speed internet service is no fun and games for many rural residents.

Providing high-speed internet in rural MN today is as vital as providing rural electricity was some 80 years ago, said Jason Hollinday, planning director for the Fond du Lac (MN) Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. That’s why the band has taken the unusual step of creating its own broadband company to provide fiber-optic internet service throughout its reservation, about 20 miles west of Duluth. “We’re giving people the tools to live in the 21st century,” Hollinday said. “It’s like when they were electrifying the rural areas.

Over the past four years, the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) has asked households whether they have access to the Internet “using a broadband (high speed) Internet service such as cable, fiber optic, or DSL service…” The answers reveal where subscriptions are ticking up and where gaps persist.

The use of digital technology has had a long stretch of rapid growth in the United States, but the share of Americans who go online, use social media or own key devices has remained stable the past two years, according to a new analysis of Pew Research Center data. The shares of US adults who say they use the internet, use social media, own a smartphone or own a tablet computer are all nearly identical to the shares who said so in 2016.

In 2018, the Federal Communications Commission estimated that 35 percent of Americans living on tribal lands lack broadband service compared to 8 percent of Americans overall. Various federal programs support increasing broadband deployment in unserved areas, including tribal lands. Tribes can form partnerships with private sector companies and others to deploy broadband infrastructure on tribal lands. The US Government Accountability Office was asked to provide information on these partnerships.

With the Connect America Fund (CAF) Phase II auction completed, the Federal Communications Commission’s next CAF responsibility will be to establish plans for the CAF remote area auction, which aims to help bring broadband to remote areas not currently addressed through the CAF program. And FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly is questioning whether there is sufficient funding for that auction. He said at the Sept 26 FCC meeting that the CAF II auction results suggest that $5-7 billion dollars would be needed to bring broadband to locations that will remain unserved after the CAF II auction.

Creditworthy consumers can face difficulties accessing credit if they lack a credit record that is treated as "scorable" by widely used credit scoring models. These consumers include those who are "credit invisible," meaning that they do not have a credit record maintained by one of the nationwide consumer reporting agencies (NCRAs). They also include those who have a credit record that contains either too little information or information that is deemed too old to be reliable.

Comcast's Internet Essentials broadband subsidy program was initially targeted to families with children eligible for government assistance, but it has been expanded to include low-income seniors (a pilot program in DC) and military veterans in its service area, the latter which Comcast says totals almost a million vets.  In an extension of that veterans assistance program announced Sept.