Cities, not rural areas, are the real Internet deserts

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. The real problem is convincing those who are offline of the value of being part of our digital life. The singular focus on infrastructure deployment distracts policymakers from the actual explanation for why so many Americans are still offline. Increasingly the digital divide isn’t about access or affordability. What then? In both private and governmental surveys, a growing number of the holdouts cite a lack of relevance. We think most of those are wrong, but convincing them otherwise is the real challenge for policymakers — and the hardest one yet.

[Blair Levin is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and led the team that produced the FCC’s 2010 National Broadband Plan. Larry Downes is an Internet industry analyst and author on business strategies and information technology.]