Digital Divide

[Commentary] There is one aspect of criminal justice reform that the current administration has tragically ignored: the broken market for inmate calling services.

Inmate calling is a horribly malfunctioning system that not only adversely impacts inmates and their families, but our society as a whole. Providers of inmate calling services compete and win business not based on being the lowest-cost bidder, as is customary for most requests for proposals to governmental agencies. Rather, they win contracts based on which of them is willing to pay the most in kickbacks (they call them “commissions”) to those correctional facilities. The result is not the lowest cost service for inmates and their families, but instead, rates for phone calls that have been as high as $14 per minute.

The FCC should end the practice of picking and choosing, ignoring and punting, while an unarguably dysfunctional market regime preys on the most vulnerable. The FCC can and should adopt targeted rules to address the costs of interstate calls. States and localities can and should reform their practices to cap rates and eliminate kickbacks. And Congress can and should enact a legislative solution that provides a firm legal foundation for further inmate calling reforms. Private litigation could also attack these practices, and some lawsuits have already been filed. But policymakers should also work to help new services and technologies enter the marketplace, to increase competition and lower prices. There is no good policy reason why an inmate’s family should have to use the most antiquated and expensive systems to communicate with loved ones when viable alternatives exist. The time to act is now.

Babies and young children are accessing and viewing media in new ways now that the majority of American families have mobile and internet-connected devices at home. Smartphones, tablets, and other devices also present new challenges and opportunities for parents introducing media to their kids for the first time. Combined with the data from the 2011 and 2013 reports, the 2017 Zero to Eight study gives us a clearer view of how young children's media use has evolved over time and provides a foundation for how we can use technology to support children's learning, play, and growth. Take a look at the infographic and read our blog post for highlights. This research helps us update Common Sense resources with the most useful and relevant information for today's parents, teachers, and leaders. Together we can make media a positive influence in kids' lives -- especially during the first eight years.

In “Exploring the Digital Divide,” Common Sense finds that there are still substantial gaps between lower- and higher-income children in home computer access (25 percentage points) and high-speed home internet access (22 percentage points).

This Digital Playbook provides several core strategies for increasing digital equity and inclusion, ensuring that all community members will have the necessary resources for full participation in the economic, political, and civic opportunities available within Charlotte, North Carolina.

The vast majority (96%) of rural young people age 14 to 22 years old have cellphones, including 17% who get mobile service from a local provider and 75% who get service from a national carrier, according to a rural youth technology survey conducted by the Foundation for Rural Service. Nearly the same amount (95%) have internet connectivity at home, and a substantial portion of them get connectivity from a local provider. Just under one in three respondents get internet connectivity from a satellite provider. That 95% number is considerably higher than overall home internet take rates that other surveys have found, underscoring how much more important the internet is for households that include teens and young adults.

The survey also included questions about how rural youth use technology — information that could become increasingly valuable as those young people become technology decision makers. About two-thirds of respondents to the FRS survey would consider living in a rural area soon after graduation.

A point often lost when we talk about the digital divide is what happens when we actually bridge the divide. Too often, we declare mission accomplished when we’ve connected a home that has been forever without, but I challenge you to take a more nuanced view. We should only claim victory when a consumer is meaningfully using their connectivity to take advantage of the economic, educational, and health care opportunities it affords....

One of our primary goals at the Federal Communications Commission is to be good stewards of ratepayer dollars. That means moving away from the past practice of using our high-cost program to fund multiple networks in the same geographic area. We should not support a company that is serving an area where another provider is providing quality service without a subsidy. That is fundamentally inconsistent with protecting consumers and it does not enable the market to work as intended.

Over 30 Democratic Members of Congress sent a bicameral letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai opposing his efforts to lower broadband Internet standards for millions of Americans. The letter comes in response to a recent Notice of Inquiry that suggested the FCC will consider significantly lowering national advanced broadband standards from the current level of 25 Mbps download / 3 Mbps upload down to 10 Mbps download / 1 Mbps upload.

“As you well know, reliable, high-speed broadband is essential to economic development, public safety, and a vibrant quality of life. Ensuring every home, school, and business has adequate access to the Internet is essential to unlocking the innovative potential of all Americans,” wrote the lawmakers. “Simply moving the goalposts is not a policy solution, and weakening the definition of high speed internet is a disservice to the rural and tribal communities the FCC has an obligation to serve.” “At this time, mobile access at 10 Mbps download/1 Mbps upload is not a reasonable replacement for fixed advanced broadband at home. This fact is well known to any child seeking to complete a homework assignment, small business owner hoping to develop an Internet presence, or individual completing an online job application or communicating with their doctor.”

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission Chairman, Ajit Pai, a former Verizon lawyer, has spoken eloquently about the “digital divide” and his commitment to resolving it. His solution? Creating the same market conditions that fueled the divide in the first place.

Pai’s approach is a field of dreams that suggests, “If we let them (internet service providers, or ISPs), they will provide it.” But that business model, at least for many of the large incumbents, has left far too many offline. Pai has suggested that broadband deserts are created by the boogie man of government regulation. But ISPs will invest only when they need to and they likely don’t see the need to right now. The problem we face is getting service to those who are too costly to serve. Pai needs to see that the pattern of exclusion in broadband results from the failure of business models, not merely the presence of regulations.

[Maya Wiley is a Henry J. Cohen Professor of Urban Policy & Management at The New School.]

In this case study, we argue that barriers to broadband access, one aspect of the digital divide for low income communities of color, stem from a myriad of factors including deregulation of the telecommunications industry and a history of segregation of and disinvestment in neighborhoods of color. Specifically:
The deregulation of the telecommunications sector in the 1990s allowed sweeping consolidation of the industry and created a broadband market with significantly less competition between firms, steeper prices, and slower speeds compared to other industrialized nations.
Regulators do not hold internet service providers (ISPs) accountable to universal build out requirements, which the government enacted in exchange for granting monopolies in the market. This monopolized and deregulated environment has allowed ISPs to upgrade digital infrastructure in the most profitable, high-income areas first. The persistence of de facto racial segregation of neighborhoods means such investments (and lack thereof) result in digital redlining of a disproportionate number of neighborhoods of color and rural areas of all races.

[Commentary] Public street poles may not look like much, but to wireless service providers, they’re valuable real estate. Companies like Verizon want low-cost access to them to install equipment to handle the rapidly growing demand for mobile data. But poles are owned locally, and cities and counties aren’t eager to give away access at below-market rates. Doing so would essentially subsidize an already wealthy industry — nationwide, as much as $2 billion a year, money that could otherwise go to expanding low-cost broadband access. As a result, the industry is waging a war for those poles, at all levels.

Big Telecom and its allies in the White House have quietly carried out a campaign to secure rapid and cheap access to those poles, at taxpayer expense. If the industry wants the same access to taxpayer-funded infrastructure that public utilities enjoy, it should bear the concomitant responsibility to make its services available to everyone in that jurisdiction. Alternatively, if Big Telecom doesn’t want the responsibility of deploying broadband in low-income neighborhoods, then the states and the Federal Communications Commission should continue to allow cities to charge market-rate fees and leases to generate municipal dollars needed to broaden access, as San Jose is doing in several low-income neighborhoods.

[Sam Liccardo is the mayor of San Jose (CA) and a member of the Federal Communications Commission’s Broadband Development Advisory Committee.]

[Commentary] In 1994 Sen Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY)decried what he felt was an ongoing redefinition of acceptable behavior designed to normalize what had previously been unacceptable. He described this phenomenon as “Defining Deviancy Down.” The Trump Federal Communications Commission is following a similar “defining down” policy when it comes to what is acceptable in the all-important networks that connect us.

By quietly altering the measuring sticks, the Trump FCC is “Defining Digital Down” to reset the definition of acceptable behavior by the companies that control America’s networks. Instead of working to build the best possible future for Americans, the agency’s new definitions lower expectations, declare victory where there is none, and set the stage for anti-consumer consolidation. Instead of challenging American companies to, for instance, raise average internet connectivity speeds to levels above those of Kenya, the Trump FCC is seeking to redefine downward what constitutes high-speed broadband. Changing the measuring stick changes the outcome. Imagine how the results of last weekend’s football games could have changed if a first down was only nine yards. Quietly, and with little notice, the agency that is supposed to be protecting consumers is changing its definitions in a manner that favors the corporations they are supposed to oversee at the expense of the consumers they are supposed to protect.

[Wheeler is a Brookings Visiting Fellow and former chairman of the FCC]