Five Steps to Get the Internet to All Americans
Date Posted: May 28, 2020
Posted In: Discussion, Ideas,
From Brookings: The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the critical nature of access to fast and affordable internet service. Demand for high-speed internet access, defined as “broadband,” has soared to new heights. One measurement found that in only a few weeks the pandemic drove almost a year’s worth of broadband traffic growth.
The internet is no longer “nice to have,” it is critical. Whether working and studying from home or applying for unemployment compensation, the internet has kept activities alive. Seeing friends and visiting the doctor without infecting yourself or others became possible under the lockdown because of high-speed internet connections.
Our reliance on the internet during coronavirus has recast how we will behave after the crisis has passed. The big lesson is that we have incorporated the internet as a critical part of our personal and professional lives. This is not going to change. The crisis has sped us forward to a paradigm shift in which we rely on the internet to bring economic and social activity to us—rather than us going to them.
Yet, tens of millions of Americans do not have access to or cannot afford quality internet service. The United States has an internet access problem, especially in rural areas. The existing program to extend broadband has become a corporate entitlement for incumbent telephone companies. At the same time, the United States has an internet affordability problem. Too many low-income Americans cannot afford broadband internet access.
The Digital Chasm: Availability and Affordability
Availability
Released in April, the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) 2020 Broadband Development Report identified approximately 18 million Americans—principally in rural areas—without access to any broadband network. The report was criticized for continuing to rely on inaccurate mapping data that skews the numbers to be more favorable than reality. An independent review of the FCC’s 2019 report found that the agency seriously undercounted unserved Americans, with the actual unserved population twice as large as the FCC claimed.
Quibbling over numbers, however, cannot mask a significant shortfall in rural internet access despite decades of programs in which the federal government subsidized the expansion of connectivity into rural America. Over the past five years alone, the federal government has provided over $22 billion to support the expansion of rural broadband. Yet, somewhere between 6% and 12% of Americans still do not have access to a quality broadband network.
Today, however, it can no longer be business as usual. Perhaps the silver lining of COVID-19’s dark cloud is the increased awareness that the current system for supporting access to high-speed broadband has failed. The FCC’s ability to track broadband coverage is so poor that the agency cannot reliably identify who has access to high-speed internet service and who does not. Simple observation tells us, however, that Americans living in the predominantly red counties of rural America have the worst internet access in the country.
Affordability
Hiding in plain sight is another reality: Low-income Americans—especially within urban areas of blue states—may have the internet outside their door, but cannot afford its monthly fee. The Reagan administration started, and Congress subsequently wrote into law, a subsidy to assure low-income Americans had access to telephone service and the ability to call 9-1-1. Called “Lifeline,” the program subsidized $9.25 per month for basic phone connectivity. Subsequent reforms applied that support to a wireless smartphone. While wireless access is a step in the right direction, relying on the small screen, slower speeds, high cost and lower usage limits of a smartphone is not a viable substitute for high-speed fixed broadband.
We hear often about the “digital divide” in America. The challenge is greater than that, however. It is what Jon Sallet calls the “digital chasm”—a cluster of digital divides that are larger, longer lasting, multi-faceted, and harder to close. Once and for all, it is time to attack the digital chasm. Any such effort begins with fixing America’s connectivity problem, both in terms of access and affordability.
I once had the responsibility, as chair of the FCC, to oversee the agency’s program to subsidize the expansion of internet access to unserved areas and low-income Americans. The limited headway we made was one of my greatest disappointments. I could point to political opposition to meaningful reforms or the political power of local service providers, but these would be excuses. The fact remains: We did not solve the problem.
Every American’s wired and wireless phone bill contains an ever-increasing monthly fee that is supposed to support the expansion of broadband to all. Currently, that fee is 21.2% of interstate and international call charges. Revenues from those charges, however, are declining as the internet replaces such old-style telephone services. The result forces the fee onto an ever-upward trajectory. It is a classic example of why a program designed in the telephone era needs to be replaced to reflect internet era realities.