Low-income

The Aug. 12 Washington Post editorial “Stuck without Internet” outlined possible solutions to address the challenge of connecting more Americans to the Internet. We already have a broadband program to bridge the divide for poor rural Americans.

The Technology Policy Institute conducted a survey of 1,275 people on Comcast’s Internet Essentials service to explore what having service at home means to low-income households. The research shows that once people subscribe to broadband, school-age children use home access for schoolwork and streaming educational media. Their parents also quickly get hooked, using the internet to search for jobs and to manage their lives more efficiently.

According to recent National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) survey data, roughly 28 million households in the United States still do not use the Internet at home (Goldberg, 2019). In its survey, the NTIA also asked why households did not use the Internet at home, with 58 percent citing a lack of interest as their main reason for being offline and every fifth household (21%) stating that it is too expensive.

At least 100,000 San Francisco residents lack adequate Internet access and miss out on economic and educational benefits. A new model -- developed by Monkeybrains, a local Internet service provider (ISP), and the city of San Francisco -- successfully bridges this digital divide for public housing residents. Thanks to low start-up and maintenance costs, the solution will be financially self-sustaining for years to come. If you want to get a program like this going in your city, here are key points:

The Federal Communications Commission solicits nominations for membership on a new Increasing Broadband Investment in Low-Income Communities Working Group of the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC). This new working group will assist the BDAC in providing advice and recommendations to the Commission on new ways to encourage the deployment of high-speed broadband infrastructure and services to low-income communities. The work of this new BDAC group will help further the Commission’s top priority—closing the digital divide for all Americans.

The National Hispanic Media Coalition joined Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Common Cause, Communications Workers of America, United Church of Christ and members of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Media/Telecom Task Force in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission expressing concern over proposed findings in the agency’s upcoming Broadband Deployment Progress Report. They requested the FCC:

A proposed merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, the country’s third- and fourth-largest wireless operators, would have a profound impact on Californians. Wireless prices will rise so the merger will be particularly onerous for customers on tight budgets. In California especially, low-income customers tend to be people of color and immigrants. The merger would therefore disproportionately burden this vulnerable group — many of whom rely on cellphones as their only form of internet access.

In 2016, Free Press released Digital Denied, which showed that disparities in broadband adoption — commonly known as the digital divide —stem not only from income inequality, but from systemic racial discrimination. The report found that nearly half of all people in the country without home-internet access were people of color. Much of that gap was indeed the result of income inequality.

In a letter recording a meeting between the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) and the legal advisors to two Federal Communications Commission commissioners, the industry group "emphasized that the Commission’s goals would be better served by directing support to areas that lack any service at all and those that have access only below 10/1 Mbps."  "WISPA supports the Commission’s goal that all consumers nationwide, including in rural areas, should ultimately have access to 25/3 M