Digital Divide

The city council in Los Angeles (CA) passed a motion banning “digital discrimination,” which is when internet service providers inequitably deploy high-speed internet connections or disproportionately withhold the best deals for their services from racially or socio-economically marginalized neighborhoods.The legislation, authored by Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson, expanded the types of discrimination the city could investigate to include digital discrimination.

In January 2024, the US Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology released the 2024 National Educational Technology Plan (NETP): A Call to Action for Closing the Digital Access, Design, and Use Divides. The NETP examines how technologies can raise the bar for all elementary and secondary students.

In the fall of 2020, around the height of the debate over pandemic school closures, a lawsuit in California made a serious claim: The state had failed its constitutional obligation to provide an equal education to lower-income, Black and Hispanic students, who had less access to online learning. State officials distributed more than 45,000 laptops and more than 73,000 other computing devices to students, according to court documents in the case.

It’s clear in reading the various proposed Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) rules that State Broadband Offices are following the lead of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and putting a lot of emphasis on making sure that everybody gets served with the grant funding. I’m not sure they understand the costly consequences of this emphasis. There are some passings in this country that are largely unservable.

Americans made more than 280,000 calls, emails, and social media posts to Congress in support of funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). The program needs $7 billion in funding from Congress to ensure people aren’t disconnected from the internet in 2024. Don’t Disconnect US Day, which took place on January 25, spurred those who care about affordable internet to contact their congressional representatives. The resulting actions from supporters calling for Congress to fund the program included:

The Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is a federally funded program that has offered a monthly benefit to eligible households. Without urgent congressional funding, ACP will run out of funds, most likely at the end of April 2024. The FCC’s ACP Wind-Down guidance includes critical information and estimated dates. In addition, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance is providing guidance, based on insights from our community of affiliates, for organizations navigating this difficult period.

The Mississippi Office of Broadband Expansion and Accessibility of Mississippi (BEAM) released its draft State Digital Skills and Accessibility (DSA) Plan for a 30-day public comment period on January 5, 2024. The Mississippi DSA Plan outlines how BEAM will work towards ensuring broadband accessibility, affordability, digital skills training, and digital opportunities for all citizens.

Peggy Braffet and her husband think about broadband a lot. When guests show up to their pick-your-own berry farm, they sometimes expect to be able to pay with credit cards, but the Braffets' slow internet connection won't allow it.

In a far cry from the early 2000s, most US adults today say they use the internet (95%), have a smartphone (90%) or subscribe to high-speed internet at home (80%), according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted May 19 to Sept. 5, 2023. Though adoption of these technologies has surged over the past two decades, there are notable differences by age, household income and educational attainment. There are large gaps between the lowest- and highest-income Americans in whether they have a broadband subscription.

Tracking broadband funding awards as they happen. In January 2024: