- With much of daily life moved online,
the coronavirus pandemic
dramatically exposed the digital divide.
The digital divide is a gap
in internet and technology access
that prohibits people
from participating in vital parts of society.
You probably only need to take a quick look
at your own community,
or your own household, to
determine the extent of the problem.
But to give you a sense of the scale,
a study from Common Sense Media
and the Boston Consulting Group
looked at the extent of the digital divide
among K-12 students in public schools.
During the pandemic
it found 16 million students were living
in the digital divide.
The problem is most prevalent among Black, Latinx
and Native American students and rural communities.
- When you've got a fourth grader
sitting in front of a screen,
trying to engage in class
if it's going out, or if it's
dropping and it's not working,
there's only so many times
that fourth grader is going to log in again
and try again, it's already really frustrating
to an adult
but it can really stop
that day's worth of education in its tracks.
- The pandemic has changed awareness of the digital divide.
The pandemic has helped folks to realize
it's not just an availability issue
and that mobile phones are insufficient.
Those are probably two of the biggest misconceptions
that we've been trying to fight,
and the pandemic has brought that to folks' attention.
When the pictures are circulating
of kids doing their homework in a parking lot,
outside Taco Bell or wherever, all of our hearts break
because we're like, "What? How can that be?"
- Short term solutions have been...like hotspots,
can be really helpful to be able to
make sure that somebody who wasn't connected
is connected, especially if somebody is mobile
and is experiencing homelessness.
All of those types of more mobile solutions
obviously will make more sense,
but then you've got to layer on top
the effectiveness of that particular technology.
You know, can it work in a shelter? Do you have
the right infrastructure footprint to give them
the connectivity that's promised through that hotspot?
So, it really depends on the details of where
that person is located and sort of the footprint
of connectivity in that,
in that geographic location.
One of the things that's concerning, obviously
for vulnerable communities, when you're
in the digital divide, it means that you
don't have access to remote work.
It's harder for you to access job postings
and potential job listings.
It's difficult to effectively engage in education
or any kind of re-training.
It's difficult to engage with any social services
or other government services.
And it's difficult to participate in civic life
and civic participation.
And then on top of that for the community that
surrounds them, when you can't reach
your vulnerable populations within your community,
it is harder to serve your community.
For a government that's seeking different ways to
more effectively deliver a government service or a program
to a community in need,
the internet is not an option.
- Some companies, like Comcast,
have pledged to increase internet speeds
to accommodate the needs of our new reality.
But it might not be enough.
That's because there are a lot of factors that go
into a steady internet connection.
Because of underinvestment and coverage gaps
by internet service providers,
these factors can be especially problematic
for people in low income areas.
The government's official broadband benchmark
is 25 megabytes per second download
and three megabytes per second upload.
That number establishes how much data
a person can send and receive per second.
25/3 is technically adequate for a typical family,
even while remote learning.
It turns out video conferencing
doesn't actually require that much bandwidth.
But people who work in the digital equity space
see that benchmark as the bare minimum.
It's helpful to think of a network's
upload and download speeds, its Mbps,
like lanes on a freeway.
Typically, there are more lanes
for downloading than for uploading.
That's become a problem recently
because cloud-based services
upload and download data at the same time.
Internet service providers and regulators
have typically focused on download speeds.
But more and more tools that we use online,
from Google Docs to Zoom, are cloud-based.
That means a typical user needs greater upload speeds,
which haven't historically been the focus.
And that's not the only issue.
When thinking about the internet as a freeway,
there's also the matter of latency.
Latency is the time it takes for data to transfer.
Think of it like the speed limit
but lower latency means quicker responsiveness.
The distance a piece of data has to travel
from a person's home to their internet hub,
how well-maintained those physical connections are,
and how efficient of a route
data has to travel from point A to point B,
all affect a person's internet experience.
If any of these factors are subpar,
it contributes to higher latency,
which is a lag in response time
between inputting a command and getting a response.
Other factors impact latency too, like congestion.
The more people there are in a home
using the same network
the more demands there are
on the network and the slower it will be.
That's true for people in the same building
or neighborhood who might all be relying
on the same infrastructure.
Multiple WiFi signals in a dense area
can also cause interference,
messing up the WiFi signal.
Additionally, the equipment a household receives
from their internet service provider,
as well as the physical layout of a home,
like brick or concrete walls,
can make or break a connection.
So, what can be done about the many barriers
to a reliable internet connection?
One of the first issues to solve is upload speeds.
The FCC has indicated that it supports
looking into raising the federal minimum Mbps standards.
If it does, it will be important
to focus on upload speeds too.
A few senators called for the federal standard to be set
at 100 megabytes per second upload and download,
in a letter to the Biden administration in early March.
Internet providers, like Comcast,
can also increase their upload speeds
an easier solved problem than some other needed fixes.
To address latency issues, for example,
we also need to see major improvement
to broadband infrastructure.
Across the country, internet service providers
have woefully under-invested in infrastructure
in Black and brown neighborhoods,
rural areas, and most especially rural areas
populated by people of color.
In these areas, people might pay for a lower cost
internet service so they technically have a connection.
However, it's built on an outdated or inefficient backbone.
Finally, there's the issue of getting physical hardware
into low-income households,
which many of these programs don't guarantee.
Internet service providers could give their customers
high quality modems and routers
and more education about how to optimize
a congested WiFi network.