Community Initiatives Helping Overcome Persistent Digital Divide

A recent study by the Pew Research Center suggests that the United States continues to suffer from a digital divide in Internet usage, a gap in accessibility and digital literacy between rich and poor and urban and rural. While corporate investment in national broadband infrastructure has increased the quality of service for affluent urban populations over the past decade, the expansion of service to disadvantaged communities has been left to the public sector. Local communities across the country are using new, innovative approaches to address the issue.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has been conducting studies on national broadband accessibility and connectivity since 2000. Initial findings suggested a stark digital divide between populations across the country, with high percentages of inner-city and rural populations lacking either basic access or affordable access to broadband. The Pew Center's latest report, released in April, claims that although there has been significant improvement in broadband connectivity, a national digital divide still persists. In June 2000, 47 percent of American adults were Internet users, compared with 78 percent as of August 2011. Twenty-eight percent of households making $30,000 per year or less were Internet users compared to 62 percent today; and 16 percent of Americans without high school diplomas were Internet users compared to 43 percent today. While those numbers mark a serious improvement in national connectivity, it is important to note that high-speed connections become ubiquitous in more affluent households, with 97 percent connectivity for households that make $75,000 per year and 94 percent connectivity for Americans who have graduated college.

A report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation suggests that corporate investment in U.S. broadband infrastructure is driving the general increase in national broadband connectivity. Without significant federal or state investment in broadband infrastructure, the U.S. has risen sharply in global competitiveness rankings for connectivity, speed, and Internet usage. Other countries that rank higher in global indices, such as Singapore, Sweden, and South Korea, are densely populated and do not contend with the same geographic barriers to broadband rollout that are faced by U.S. service providers.

While corporate-driven rollout of U.S. broadband infrastructure generally has increased access and connectivity for American consumers, there are lingering inequalities in service delivery that impede the economic competitiveness of low-income Americans. The digital divide has long-term consequences for national economic growth and local policymakers across the country are stepping in to address the issue. The Brookings Institution argues that broad-based, national economic growth has not materialized in the aftermath of the Great Recession in part because of an entrenched digital divide defined by a national patchwork of corporate broadband coverage and lack of large-scale, public investment (see SSTI's December 2012 Digest article).

The Institute for Local Self Reliance has published a map detailing the efforts of 342 communities across the country that are providing publicly owned and operated broadband access. Publicly owned broadband networks often are provided free of charge or below-market rates and, as illustrated in a new Institute for Local Self Reliance report, the fastest broadband networks in the country are being built by local governments. Cities like Chattanooga, TN, and Lafayette, LA, are operating of the fastest connections in the country.

The move towards community-owned, public broadband networks has not gone unnoticed in the corporate world. Google has partnered with a select group of communities across the U.S. (Kansas City, Austin, and Provo, UT) to initiate the city-wide rollout of its ultra-fast Google Fiber service. Google's partner cities have been advertising the 100 Gigabit service both as an investment to attract tech entrepreneurs and, as Austin community leaders have noted in a recent PRI story, a public resource for underserved communities that will promote digital inclusion.

As communities continue to experiment with the provision of city-owned broadband services, state lawmakers will be faced with tough decisions over how to regulate broadband networks. Many states have current laws that either prohibit or establish significant barriers to the provision of Internet service as a public utility. The FCC so far has refused to intervene in states to allow public ownership of Internet services. Without large-scale federal investment or intervention in state regulatory markets the digital divide for U.S. households may continue to persist.