Op-Ed

• Digital deserts exist, more so in rural areas.
• The urban-rural access divide is sizeable and still persists.
• A little less than half of housing units in the country are sliced up in between either top 6 only providers or other providers only.
• The technology with the largest footprint in the nation (DSL) also has the lowest median advertised speeds pointing to a potential quality of service issue.

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.

Tech companies may have found their most formidable opponents: state attorneys general. In the past week, nine attorneys general have joined to examine whether Facebook has engaged in anti-competitive practices, such as stifling competitors or increasing the price of advertising. And 50 announced an investigation into potential monopolistic behavior by Google, which will likely include scrutiny of its search and advertising businesses. When state attorneys general band together, they are an imposing force.

Wi-Fi officially launched 20 years ago, on September 15, 1999. There are many ways in which Wi-Fi might not have become ubiquitous, and instead HomeRF (home radio frequency) remained a competing standard. Had the Wireless Ethernet Compatability Alliance (WECA) chose to focus on just business connectivity, not "go-anywhere" connectivity, workers would have used "FlankSpeed" (a re-envisioned "Wi-Fi") at the office and HomeRF at home. It would be more difficult to bring work home with you. Neither an embattled FlankSpeed nor HomeRF could ever have been as cheap, or as pervasive, as Wi-Fi.

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.

Local newspapers have always been the epicenter of local news ecosystems. While communities may have other sources of journalism, such as TV and radio stations and online-only outlets, the bulk of the reporting serving local communities has traditionally been provided by local newspapers. we conducted a study that explores which types of outlets are the most significant producers of journalism in 100 randomly sampled communities across the US.

In contrast to prior technological eras—marked by inventions such as the railroad, telephone, automobile, and television—the age of digital technology has progressed for several decades with remarkably little regulation, or even self‑regulation. This hands‑off attide needs to give way to a more activist approach. The greatest risk facing technology firms isn’t overregulation—it’s that government won’t do enough, swiftly enough, to address the technology issues affecting the world.

The media merger pot keeps boiling. It appears that the Federal Communications Commission is about to approve another damaging deal, this one between Nexstar and Tribune. Nextar owns 171 television stations in 100 markets and Tribune has 44 stations in 33 markets. That translates into a national audience reach of 72 percent of U.S.

Since its founding in 1907, the National Rural Education Association (NREA) has advocated for policies to improve the quality of education in rural communities. There are few issues today that are more critical to that mission than expanding broadband connectivity in rural America. It is critical our policymakers in Washington act. NREA is part of a coalition that works to raise awareness and build support behind a mixed-technology approach to eliminating the rural broadband gap.

Candidates are promising billions of dollars to rural and minority communities to deploy broadband. These communities still wait. While these communities do not have the money to build their own telecommunications infrastructure, they simply can’t risk waiting for a federal government that makes promises it knows can never be fulfilled. How can communities address this challenge? They must first recognize that the federal government is not coming with the money.