Low-income

The House Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Communications and Technology held a hearing entitled Empowering and Connecting Communities Through Digital Equity and Internet Adoption.

Even if broadband coverage isn’t the problem in a local area, the cost of high-speed Internet service may still hold back families who don’t have much money.

Current research suggests that low-income people can only afford to pay about $10  monthly for broadband. Anything more competes with other utility bills and the cost of food. Meeting the goal of universal connectivity and providing fixed broadband at about $10 per month requires a multi-pronged strategy - what my Benton colleague Jonathan Sallet calls an “Affordability Agenda.” It includes:

Free Press condemned the Federal Communications Commission for waging war on the poor as the agency moved forward with a proceeding to deny essential broadband and telephone subsidies to low-income people. 

New analysis of broadband adoption in a selection of cities shows a strong relationship between low household broadband adoption levels and poverty. The analysis also shows that rising economic tides in cities has little to do with recent growth in broadband adoption – but that declines in poverty rates do.

Broadband’s fundamental value doesn’t come from connecting computers to networks; its value comes from connecting people to opportunity, and society to new solutions. When a broadband network is available but a person who wants to use it can’t do so, then the network is less valuable to everyone else who does use it. That's because the he benefits of broadband adoption do not flow only to the people who are new broadband users. Expanding broadband usage can grow the U.S. economy broadly. Expanding broadband usage, furthering civic engagement, can build stronger democratic institutions.

In August, Comcast announced the most sweeping eligibility change in Internet Essentials' eight-year history.  Comcast is now offering Internet connections to all low-income Americans, wherever Comcast offers service.  Since the program launched in 2011, more than eight million low-income Americans have connected to the Internet at home, roughly 90 percent of whom were not connected prior to joining Internet Essentials. Comcast has invested more than $650 million in digital skills training, benefiting nearly 9.5 million people. Internet Essentials has provided 100,000 heavily discounted and

Kansas City prides itself on being a national leader for digital equity. Becoming the first Google Fiber city in 2011 launched KC into the spotlight as it became America’s first gigabit metropolis.

The Federal Communications Commission began subsidizing home phone lines in 1985 to provide “the opportunities and security that phone service brings” to people who cannot afford it, according to the FCC’s website. The Lifeline program started including cellphone plans in 2005. Currently, subscribers receive $9.25 per month to put toward a discounted cellphone plan designed by provider companies. For some, that means a cap of 250 voice minutes and 2 GB of mobile data.

In the next decade, everyone in America should be able to use High-Performance Broadband.