Editorial

A year ago, I urged us all to look beyond the $65 billion the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act sets aside for broadband and realize the importance of Congress’ recognition that access to affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband is essential to full participation in modern life in the United States. I still find this renewed and updated Congressional commitment to universal service to be astounding. We should continue to celebrate it—and continue the work that ensures this commitment becomes a reality.

For community leaders striving for digital equity, I am happy to share Pathways to Digital Equity, a guidebook to help communities evaluate and meet specific connectivity needs.

There’s a story Republicans tell about the politics of rural America, one aimed at both rural people and the rest of us. It goes like this: 'Those coastal urban elitist Democrats look down their noses at you, but the GOP has got your back. They hate you; we love you. They ignore you; we’re working for you. Whatever you do, don’t even think about voting for a Democrat.' That story pervades our discussion of the rural-urban divide in US politics. But it’s fundamentally false. The reality is complex.

This is Digital Inclusion Week 2022, a time to raise awareness of solutions addressing home internet access, personal devices, and local technology training and support programs.

The Federal Communications Commission withdrew nearly $900 million in subsidies that had been granted to satellite operator Starlink to bring the internet to 642,000 remote, rural locations. The FCC subsidy was key anchor revenue for a new satellite broadband constellation that has to heavily subsidize customer terminals — priced in most markets at $599 — in order to expand the service. The FCC, in reversing a December 2020 decision, called proposals from Starlink and another subsidy candidate “risky," and questioned Starlink’s ability to deliver a reliable and affordable offer.

It’s been 18 months since President Joe Biden was inaugurated. Yet restoring crucial net neutrality rules that are the foundation for an open internet continues to languish in Washington (DC). The problem stems from Democratic lawmakers’ inability to confirm Biden’s nominee, Gigi Sohn [Senior Fellow and Public Advocate at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society], to the Federal Communications Commission. She is needed to break the 2-2 deadlock on the FCC that continues to block action on net neutrality and broadband privacy regulations.

On the eve of this week’s rail strikes, it was reported that industry bosses are planning to phase out paper train tickets and shut almost 1,000 station ticket offices in England. The government says nothing has been decided. But the transport secretary, Grant Shapps, has made no secret of his desire to see savings delivered in this way; some stations, Mr Shapps likes to point out, sell only a handful of tickets each week and the vast majority of transactions have moved online.

We're just a few days from Juneteenth, a holiday that reminds us of the critical connection between communications and equity. June 19 commemorates the day in 1865 when slaves in Texas first learned about the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Cut off from communications, slaves in Texas were deprived news of their freedom for over two and a half years. One hundred and fifty-seven years later, we can still see how lack of access to communications holds back individuals, families, and communities.

The Biden administration rolled out the Affordable Connectivity Program to help low-income people pay for service. The federal government should not stop with this subsidy program when it addresses the affordability component of the digital divide. Internet service providers (ISPs) will get a lot of new customers as the government pays to extend service to areas that have not been worth serving when the companies were stringing the wires, and it would be a shame if the businesses were allowed to use their near-monopolies to drive up prices for everyone else.

The Biden Administration’s newly launched Declaration for the Future of the Internet is too ambitious. There is no need to focus on what are mostly domestic Internet policy issues, where nations are likely to have differing approaches. This includes data privacy—an issue that is best dealt with the national government level, lest the stronger regulator (the European Union) succeed in imposing its innovation-limiting privacy regime on the rest of the free world.