State Digital Equity Planning Grant Program

There is a persistent and well-known gap between rural and urban populations in terms of their internet usage.

As of February 2023, all states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have received their digital equity planning grants from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). At the Office of Educational Technology (OET), our priority is to support states as they include the voices, needs, and assets of the education community in their digital equity plans. Therefore, in 2022, OET launched the Digital Equity Education Roundtables Initiative and published Advancing Digital Equity for All, which identifies barriers faced by learners in adopting reliable, high-speed

While expanding broadband access throughout Texas is a priority for Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX), part of his More Prosperous Texas initiative, the governor's record on connectivity is mixed. Texas faces two simultaneous challenges. First, there remain barriers to access which are particularly prevalent in rural areas of the state. Second, even where broadband is available, there remains a substantial portion of Texans who have not adopted or subscribed to broadband in their homes.

Extending broadband's reach to all Nevadans is a huge challenge. Nevada is the 7th-largest state in the U.S., but ranks just 32 in population, making it one of the least densely populated states in the country. Nearly three-quarters of Nevada's people live in Clark County which is home to the state's four largest cities, including Las Vegas. But, in 2000, over half of Nevada’s counties had fewer than 2 people per square mile.

In his first State of the Commonwealth address in January 2020, Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) asked lawmakers to address some stark realities. At the time, Kentucky was the third poorest state by per capita income and over 1 in 5 children in the state lived in poverty. The state ranked in the top eight of states in terms of hunger. Kentucky had some of the highest child abuse and neglect rates in the country.

As of 2021, roughly 13 percent of Alabama’s 1.65 million addresses were unserved by broadband of at least 25 Megabits per second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload (25/3), while about 19 percent of addresses were unserved by 100/20 service—the threshold recommended as the state’s five-year target to align with new federal funding opportunities. Higher-speed services like 100/100 and symmetrical 1 Gbps were available only to about 25 percent of addresses.

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.

In the summer of 2023, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will begin distributing hundreds of millions, and in some cases billions, of funding to states as part of the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. Expectedly, states are busy creating and staffing broadband offices in anticipation of the BEAD and digital equity monies. Blinded by a nationwide broadband fever, however, some broadband leaders have proclaimed that states will entirely close, bridge, or eliminate the digital divide in the coming years.

NTIA ended 2022 by awarding $304 million in funding to every state, along with Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, for planning how to best deploy networks to connect everyone in America to affordable, reliable, high-speed Internet service. Each state has different needs and unique challenges in bridging the digital divide, and our planning grants recognize the importance of flexibility. Still, there are broad trends driving the ways states are putting this money to use: