Broadband for America Now

Source: Benton Institute for Broadband & Society Published: November 2020

In October 2019, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society issued Broadband for America’s Future: A Vision for the 2020s. The agenda was comprehensive, constructed upon achievements in communities and insights from experts across the nation. The report outlined the key building blocks of broadband policy—deployment, competition, community anchor institutions, and digital equity (including affordability and adoption). The agenda called for everyone to be able to use High-Performance Broadband by the end of the decade.

When we released the report last fall, we promised a refresh in 2020 because we knew there were issues that required additional development and more success stories that needed to be told.

What we did not know was that the world would be changed permanently by COVID-19, creating health, economic, and social crises, resulting in the worst economic setback in America in decades and unveiling a connectivity crisis that spans rural and urban places, threatening to create an even more divided America.

Before he passed, Congressman John Lewis told us, “Access to the Internet … is the civil rights issue of the 21st century.” There are almost three times as many people without broadband in urban/metro places than in rural places,3 and lack of broadband adoption is greater among Black, Hispanic, and lower-income households. Federal Communications Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, joined by civil rights leaders, explained, “Our historic failure to close the digital divide has had a devastating effect on communities of color in both rural and urban America.”

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Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash