The Spectrum Shortage and African Americans

Minority Media and Telecommunications Council co-founder and President David Honig took time away from planning MMTC’s Annual Conference to educate the leaders of America’s municipalities about spectrum at the World Conference of Mayors Broadband Symposium in Tuskegee (AL).

Since many of the attendees knew very little about what spectrum was and why it is important to their cities, Honig focused his hour-long discussion on “The Future of Broadband: How to Alleviate the Spectrum Shortage.” The fact that so many of the nation’s leaders know little about something as important as the spectrum shortage can be disheartening, but not surprising. Spectrum is a topic many feel might be too technical to grasp, which is definitely not the case. This is why it is so important for industry experts to speak at conferences like this. For those who don’t know that much about spectrum (or want to brush up on the topic), Honig provided some valuable insight during his address. In spite of the importance of spectrum, one-third of Americans and forty percent of African Americans do not have a broadband connection in their homes. In addition, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, African Americans are behind on connecting to the Internet in general, with 70 percent of African Americans connecting, compared with 76 percent of whites. African Americans, however, are the heaviest adopters of wireless connections on their mobile phones. The African American mobile wireless subscription rate is 58 percent, compared to 41 percent for whites. According to Honig, this is a double-edged sword. “The relative affordability of mobile wireless broadband use versus costs for home broadband use sparked some to describe this phenomenon as the ‘minority wireless miracle,’” he stated. However, “Since African Americans are disproportionately relying on mobile wireless broadband for Internet access, they will be [disproportionately] affected if the supply of commercial spectrum is not increased.”