Low-income

Cox announced it has increased speeds for the company's low-cost internet product, Connect2Compete, which is available to families with school-aged children who are enrolled in low-income assistance programs. Download speeds are now up to 25 megabytes per second for all Connect2Compete customers. Upload speeds have also increased from 1 to 3 megabytes per second.

In cities like Denver, where broadband is so prolific that availability is estimated at 99.94%, the digital divide is no longer about lack of internet service or limited to rural areas.

At the outset of their recent Op-Ed, Blair Levin and Larry Downes reject federal policymakers’ singular focus on promoting rural broadband deployment, arguing that the digital divide is not merely a question of rural access. In fact, they rightly note that there are more disconnected folks in urban areas than in rural ones. Millions of disconnected people live where broadband is already deployed, but still don’t subscribe to it.

Sen Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Rep Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY-18) introduced a bicameral bill that would increase access to broadband service for low-income urban and rural Americans.  The Promoting Access to Broadband Act would help states increase awareness of, and enrollment in, the Federal Communications Commission’s Lifeline program, which aims to help low-income households pay for their telephone and broadband service charges by providing a monthly subsidy of $9.25.  Enrollment in the Lifeline program remains extremely low nationwide. The Promoting Access to Broadband Act wo

In their recent Op-Ed in the Washington Post, “Cities, not rural areas, are the real Internet deserts,” authors Blair Levin and Larry Downes argue that the digital divide in cities persists because uneducated people do not understand the importance, or “relevance,” of the internet in their everyday lives.

The digital divide is not exclusively or even most significantly a rural problem. Three times as many households in urban areas remain unconnected as in rural areas. And regardless of geography, access isn’t the main reason these homes are without Internet service. The vast majority of US homes without broadband service could have it today, but they don’t want it.

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.