Digital Equity/Digital Inclusion

The Federal Communications Commission recently opened a docket, at the prompting of federal legislation, that asks for examples of digital discrimination. The big cable companies and telecoms are all going to swear they don’t discriminate against anybody for any reason, and every argument they make will be pure bosh. If people decide to respond to this FCC docket, we’ll see more evidence of discrimination based on income. We might even get some smoking gun evidence that some of the discrimination comes from corporate bias based on race and other factors.

Only a few blocks separate Amarillo’s lively, bustling downtown area from the city’s historic El Barrio district. While much of the city has spotty internet, residents in El Barrio are almost completely disconnected. The residents are determined to give current and future families more than the bare minimum.

When it comes to expanding broadband connectivity, policymakers face two major challenges: 1) ensuring that all US residents have access to high-speed fixed broadband connectivity (“availability”), and 2) ensuring that as many US residents as possible subscribe to fixed broadband (“adoption”). In other words, policymakers are tasked with making sure fixed broadband is both universally available and universally adopted.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic began, policymakers, businesses, and workforce advocates were already recognizing that workers were not being replaced by robots, but rather, being called upon to work hand-in-glove with rapidly evolving technology. Now — as leaders design labor market policies to drive a thriving and inclusive economy — it is imperative to understand this digital transformation. The analysis finds the following:

Unfortunately, the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is set to run out of funds as soon as early 2024. For conservatives who are rightly concerned about traditional government subsidies, I humbly suggest that extending the ACP by appropriating additional funds for the program is well within our economic principles, even when we absolutely must shrink overall federal spending.

Nearly 172,000 Chicago households (over 15%) don’t have internet at home, and nearly 92,000 (roughly 8%) don’t have any device, including a computer, laptop, tablet, or smart mobile device.

The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development's Office of Broadband Development (OBD) is developing a digital equity plan to create improvements in internet affordability, access to internet-enabled devices, and ways to provide digital skills training. We want to hear from Minnesotans most impacted by the digital access and skills gap to ensure our digital equity plan reflects the goals and needs of all Minnesotans. This plan will help us determine how to spend federal funding coming in 2024 aimed at increasing digital access and skills.

As a nonprofit dedicated to guiding communities into the connected future, US Ignite partnered with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to design Project OVERCOME to test creative solutions to connect the unconnected. The

Gigi Sohn is gay. She’s also a highly qualified nominee for the Federal Communications Commission with decades of experience as a public interest advocate working on issues of affordable broadband access, net neutrality, and closing the digital divide.

The Federal Communications Commission committed over $30 million in a new funding round through the Emergency Connectivity Program, which provides digital services for students in communities across the country. These funding commitments support applications from all three application windows, benefiting approximately 75,000 students across the country, including students in Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Nebraska, New Jersey, and Nevada—and will fund applications from all three application windows that will support over 200 schools, 15 libraries, and 1 consortium.