Category: Broadband Inequality

  • Federal Communication Commission Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel testifies during an oversight hearing to examine the Federal Communications Commission on Capitol Hill on June 24, 2020, in Washington, D.C.

    After many months of waiting, the Biden White House has tapped Jessica Rosenworcel to be Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair and Gigi Sohn for the fifth and final seat on the five-person commission. Until these vacancies are filled, the agency will remain deadlocked at two-two, Democrats vs. Republicans. Now that there’s daylight for a clear majority, action at the FCC is urgent to protect an open internet, make it more affordable to everyone and address the disgraceful lack of diversity in ownership of U.S. media.

    Questions about who would take these key leadership positions had swirled around Washington, D.C., all year. Taking this much time to name anyone beats even the longest delay in recent memory: Back in 1977, President Jimmy Carter managed to at least nominate a new chair by mid-September of that year.

    In the interim, the Biden administration had repeatedly stated that ensuring people have access to high-speed internet is a priority. The delay in naming a permanent chair to the FCC as well as a fifth commissioner has hobbled the agency’s ability to ensure that U.S. broadband is open and affordable to everyone.

    To do so, the FCC needs to return to its authority under Title II of the Communications Act to regulate internet access like the essential utility it is. Now the White House has given the FCC the leadership and votes it needs to get the job done — and it’s incumbent on the Senate to confirm Rosenworcel and Sohn as soon as possible.

    The stakes were clear even before Biden took office. The Trump administration’s disastrous decisions gutting the FCC’s authority to regulate broadband and repealing net neutrality rules in late 2017 marked a cultural moment. Without net neutrality protections, powerful companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon are free to take from internet users the ability to choose where we go and whom we connect with online. People demonstrated outside of Verizon stores — since Verizon was a former employer of Donald Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai — in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in the days leading up to the repeal. My media reform advocacy group, Free Press and our allies — including Democratic FCC commissioners and lawmakers — assembled on a cold December morning with dozens of activists outside the FCC to protest the decision and call for the return of protections.

    Since Biden’s inauguration, public interest groups and activists have sent letters and petitions to the White House and Senate leadership calling for the agency to get the majority it needs to repair the damage done during the Trump years.

    These shouldn’t be partisan issues, and outside of the Beltway, they aren’t. But they are inside D.C. and the FCC. Without the votes needed to restore FCC authority over broadband, the agency has been unable to take all of the bold action it needs to take. It hasn’t been able to fully stop internet service providers from cutting off people’s service during the COVID-19 pandemic, or investigate these companies’ unjust and unreasonable use of data caps to milk more money out of an emergency COVID funding program for internet subscribers.

    In addition, while the agency successfully created that new program (called the Emergency Broadband Benefit) under a pandemic-relief bill that Congress passed last year, it couldn’t require providers to accept that benefit on every plan they offer because it didn’t have the votes to do so. It implemented these new bills Congress is passing only in ways that would pass muster with the agencies’ two Republican commissioners. The short-staffed FCC also couldn’t fully guarantee its longstanding Lifeline program — which offers a subsidy to those who can’t afford the high costs of communications — would be useful for broadband, or take other transformative steps to ensure affordable high-speed internet access for low-income neighborhoods and communities of color, which are disproportionately affected by the digital divide.

    With a filled-out commission, the agency can and must do all of that and more. It must conduct the race-equity audit called for by Free Press’s Media 2070 project, MediaJustice and more than 100 organizations and community leaders. The audit would include a thorough FCC investigation of the history of racism in its media policies, and identify reparative actions the agency can take.

    The administration now faces a serious time crunch: Confirmation of FCC nominees like Rosenworcel and Sohn could take months. But we don’t have that kind of time now, thanks to how long the White House took to finalize these picks.

    Now the ball is in the Senate’s court. If it truly wants to prioritize an affordable internet, net neutrality protections and an equitable media system, it needs to confirm Rosenworcel and Sohn. The time to do so is now. Everyone can help make this happen by contacting their senators in support of quick confirmation.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Family using internet at table

    When the coronavirus pandemic began a year ago, millions of Americans struggled to transition to remote work and learning — a shift that was complicated by broadband inequality.

    At least 21 million Americans lack access to high speed internet, with some estimates doubling that number. To help fix the problem, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) formally approved the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program last month. The program was funded with $3.2 billion from the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, the stimulus package Congress passed in December, to lower the price of high-speed internet for eligible households.

    The program will provide up to a $50 monthly discount to low-income Americans for broadband, up to a $75 discount for households on tribal lands, and up to $100 to help with the cost of purchasing a computer or tablet. Anyone who uses the FCC’s Lifeline program for discounted telephone services, is enrolled in Medicaid or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, receives free or reduced school lunch or Pell grants, or experienced a loss of income since the pandemic can apply for the internet discount by the end of April.

    “This is a program that will help those at risk of digital disconnection. It will help those sitting in cars in parking lots just to catch a Wi-Fi signal to go online for work,” Jessica Rosenworcel, the FCC’s acting chair, said in a statement. “It will help those lingering outside the library with a laptop just to get a wireless signal for remote learning. It will help those who worry about choosing between paying a broadband bill and paying rent or buying groceries.”

    Over half of Americans say the internet has been crucial during the coronavirus outbreak, according to a Pew Research Center report published in April. But about 54% of Latinos and 36% of Black people said they were worried about paying their internet bills, compared to 21% of white people.

    “The data consistently bears out that the primary barrier to people connecting to the internet and the biggest driver of our digital divide right now is lack of affordability,” Dana Floberg, a policy manager with the media justice group Free Press, told Facing South.

    The Emergency Broadband Benefit Program also requires internet service providers to sign up to participate. Broadband companies including AT&T and Comcast have voiced support for the program. These providers have established more affordable services for low-income Americans in the past.

    Before the enrollment period for the program launches next month, organizations and state governments are working to spread awareness.

    Accessing Broadband in the South

    Beyond the rebate and the $7 billion Congress allocated to connect Americans to high-speed Internet, state governments in the South are also working to tackle broadband inequality through varied approaches.

    In Texas, which ranks 35th in the nation for broadband adoption, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) made widening broadband access a priority during his State of the State address in February. The state established a Broadband Development Council in 2019, which found that 1 million Texans lacked access to broadband, according to the Dallas Morning News. More recent estimates put that number at over 4 million.

    Last November, the council released its first report to the governor’s office, recommending that the state create a broadband office and a state grant program among other initiatives, said Jennifer Harris, a council member and a program director at Connected Nation Texas.

    “Those recommendations have been directly reflected in legislation that has been filed this legislative session,” Harris said.

    Connected Nation Texas functions as a public-private organization that works to broaden access to high-speed internet in the state, and Harris said they often field calls from Texans with questions about slow internet speeds and accessing telehealth. A state broadband office could be what Harris called a “neutral resource” for communities that want information about better internet.

    North Carolina has an established Broadband Infrastructure Office under the state Department of Information Technology. Last week, Gov. Roy Cooper (D) announced a partnership with SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service to launch a pilot program to help students in the state’s underserved regions access broadband. According to a press release, the deal will use $264,000 from the CARES Act, the first federal coronavirus stimulus bill signed into law in March 2020.

    Jeff Sural, the director of the state’s Broadband Infrastructure Office, said they chose Swain County in Western North Carolina and Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks for the program because they are geographically different locations. The state is also working on adding students in Warren County, along the Virginia border, Sural said. All three of those are rural counties. Fewer than 100 students statewide will participate in the program, which lasts to the end of the calendar year, the groups in the pilot must be clustered, and the service will not be available all day.

    Sural and his office are also gearing up to spread the word about the FCC’s benefit program through social media campaigns and partnerships with smaller broadband companies in the state, as well as community colleges and libraries.

    During the pandemic, North Carolina’s Broadband Infrastructure Office has heard concerns from the community about bandwidth problems and affordability. ” The issue that we hear about most is quality of service,” Sural said. “Either folks don’t have service, or the service they have isn’t reliable. It cuts out on them or there’s not enough bandwidth so that they can work from home and the kids can go to school from home.”

    Affordability concerns are also an issue in the state’s urban areas, which have access to broadband that can be costly, he said. Solutions to broadband inequality in the state include better public policy, which is already being discussed and introduced, and subsidies for people who can’t afford high-speed internet, according to Sural.

    While the South is geographically diverse, large portions of the region are classified as rural. About 22% of Americans in rural areas lack access to broadband, according to the FCC’s 2020 Broadband Deployment Report.

    “It is more challenging to build broadband networks in rural areas where there are fewer people to serve, and broadband companies see less of a return on investment to build in these hard to reach places,” Floberg of Free Press said. “For many communities in the South that are lower income, that are predominately communities of color, what we’ve seen is that often the major broadband providers are not as interested in serving those communities.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.