Digital Divide

This report presents the main findings from the 2023 Statewide Survey on Broadband Adoption Survey.

Digital Inclusion Coalitions provide the unique service of developing their communities’ digital inclusion ecosystems. Coalitions advance digital equity by providing collective empowerment, alignment, coordination, and amplification of member organizations’ digital inclusion efforts. To maximize the coalition’s ability to support digital equity, coalitions should:

I’m currently enrolled in one of the first bachelor’s degree programs inside California prisons. The program is offered by California State University, Los Angeles, and the laptop is one of its perks. The students in my cohort—the program’s third, but the first to receive personal laptops—were all incarcerated at very young ages and sentenced to prison terms that reflect football scores. I’ve served 17 years of a 50-year-to-life sentence, and none of us foresaw living past our 18th birthdays, let alone attending university.

Since around 2016, telecommunications companies like ViaPath and Securus (which owns JPay) have issued thousands of tablets in prisons and jails nationwide. These devices are populated with prison-approved content and can’t connect to the internet unless they are hacked and updated with software, a process otherwise known as jailbreaking, or rooting. Jailbreaking a tablet can cost up to $300, and the reasons for doing it vary.

One of the most interesting rules in the BEAD Program is that broadband needs to be offered to every unserved location in the country—not 98 percent, not 99 percent, but all of them. This sounds like a terrific policy goal, but as I’ve been thinking about it, the goal is going to be incredibly hard to meet in many places. There are homes throughout the West that are far away from everybody else and will be extremely expensive to reach. There might be even more such homes in Alaska.

Mayor Brandon Scott (D-Baltimore) announced FreeBmoreWiFi, a free, public WiFi network in the City of Baltimore, which will be implemented by the Office of Broadband and Digital Equity and funded by American Rescue Plan Act funds. The first locations that will be getting this free WiFi are Middle Branch Fitness and Wellness and the Solo Gibbs Recreation Center. The City aims to have the network up at all of Baltimore City's recreation centers by the end of 2024, with future expansion expected. "FreeBmoreWiFi is about more than internet access," says Baltimore City IT Director Todd Carter.

The South Carolina Broadband Office (SCBBO) is pleased to announce 17 newly funded projects through its American Rescue Plan Act’s Capital Projects Fund (CPF 1.0) grant program. For this round of investments, the SCBBO committed $112,303,273 to eight Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that will connect over 16,000 locations statewide. The total investment for this round of broadband expansion, which includes ISP contribution, is estimated to be $162,141,901.

Growth, equity, education, workforce opportunities, access to government services, and sustainability. Each of these values—and many of the actions that can be taken to achieve them—can be enhanced by equitable access to high-speed internet, and a population equipped with the digital skills to productively use computers and the internet.

Full-fibre broadband is now available at more than half of UK residential premises (57%), sharply up from 42% in 2022. Gigabit-capable broadband coverage levels now exceed three-quarters (78%) of UK residential premises, up from 70% in 2022. Ofcom saw 1.7 million new full-fibre consumer connections in the year to May 2023, out of a total of 4.6 million full-fibre connections. This means that just over a third of all full-fibre connections have been taken up in the twelve months to May 2023.

For more than 25 years, I’ve been in prison, where TV is a staple of prison life as essential as staff and more immutable than any rehabilitative program. Cell-block televisions are equal parts library, time machine, and mecca, instructing the incarcerated in the ways of the world they aspire to return to. Traditionally, most prisons have a communal TV, though some also sell personal TV sets.