Bridging the digital divide
The great chasm between those who have access to the internet and computers and those who do not is what’s called the digital divide. According to the Federal Communications Commission’s latest report, 14.5 million Americans still do not have access to internet service at the current standard: download speeds of 25 megabits per second and upload speeds of 3 megabits per second. (Slower services, like dial-up or cellular hotspots, cannot transmit data as fast as fiber-optic cables can.) The good news is the divide is closing. The gap between urban and rural Americans with access to broadband service has dropped nearly 50 percent since 2016, according to the FCC. The recently passed infrastructure package promises to pour $65 billion into providing affordable, high-speed internet to all Americans. And last year, Congress approved $7 billion in funding for broadband distribution as part of a COVID-19 relief package. Earlier this year, Vice President Kamala Harris visited the headquarters of the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative in Plymouth, New Hampshire, to discuss expanding high-speed broadband internet across the state, likening it to rural electrification in the 1930s. “We have a legacy of doing this work in America. We have a legacy of saying, ‘We’re going to have a national commitment to making sure everyone has access to the basic things they need,’ and now in the year 2021, that’s broadband,” Harris said.Achieving digital equity
Even with access to broadband internet, affordability is often a challenge: The Pew Research Center found, in 2021, that financial concerns were the primary barrier to adoption of broadband services, with 45 percent of the people without broadband at home citing the high cost of a subscription. Take North Carolina, for example. An estimated 1.1 million households in the state don’t have high-speed internet in their homes. Of those, about one-third don’t have access to broadband, while the rest may have access but can’t afford it or don’t subscribe. There’s a racial divide, too. In North Carolina, 76 percent of white households subscribe to the internet; Latino households are at 68 percent subscribed; Black at 64 percent; and Native American at 57 percent. “It’s great if I can run a fiber line by your house, but if you can’t afford it, or if you don’t have a laptop, or you don’t have the digital skills, that fiber line is of no use to you,” says Nate Denny, deputy secretary for broadband and digital equity with the North Carolina Department of Information Technology. “We knew this was a problem before we fell into a global pandemic, but COVID has really brought it home.” North Carolina is working hard to implement what’s known as digital equity, the idea that everyone has equal and affordable access to the information technology they need to function in society. In May, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper announced plans to invest $1.2 billion in American Recovery Plan funds to connect 98 percent of North Carolina households to high-speed internet infrastructure by 2025. The state will also offer subsidies of $50 a month for qualifying low-income households so that at least 80 percent of North Carolina households are able to subscribe to broadband service. “Broadband services are so key to everything we do today. It’s an absolutely critical tool for economic development, education, and telemedicine,” Denny says. “But it’s not just the internet plan. It’s also tackling that affordability and digital literacy element, focusing on the ability of the end user to take advantage of that service once it’s in.”Connectivity opens doors
Starting around 2013, coal mines began to shut down in Colorado’s North Fork Valley, a collection of small, pastoral towns along the state’s Western Slope. More than a thousand people lost their jobs, and the towns of Delta and Montrose were shrinking in population—declining by around 1.5 percent a year at the same time that the state as a whole was growing in population by 4.8 percent annually. And unemployment numbers in these towns were 61 percent higher compared to elsewhere in Colorado. “Even before coal shut down, we were working with our communities to figure out what were the biggest barriers to economic development in our region, and broadband felt like one of the biggest impediments,” says Michelle Haynes, executive director of Region 10, a nonprofit organization supported by local and county governments that aims to build strong communities across six counties in western Colorado. “Businesses were leaving the area because of a lack of broadband.” In Gunnison County, there was no backup system, so when internet service would go out, emergency dispatch services would shut down, gas stations and banking systems would go offline. Region 10 started implementing a broadband plan around 2015, and they’re now about 80 to 90 percent through that original plan, with help from government funding and various partners, including the Delta Montrose Electric Association, which donated more than $2 million worth of assets and a long-term capital lease on fiber-optic cable. Most houses in the area now have broadband access that people can afford. A local startup, called Lightworks Fiber, began winning contracts from the local electric cooperative to expand broadband cable, and they’ve created more than 100 jobs, including hiring many laid-off mine workers, to help build those cables. Now seven years into the broadband project, things are starting to look up in the region. During the pandemic, towns like Montrose were able to attract remote workers looking to get out of the city and also retain current residents who were able to access remote jobs. “We’re starting to see recovery,” Haynes says. “Usually, being in a rural area during a recession isn’t great. But during the pandemic, we saw people come into our communities, and more people working remotely. We’ve had a shift in housing prices, a shift in jobs. We’re still looking at ways to diversify our economy and looking for ways to make a more sustainable and diverse economy. But broadband has created a lot of that equity to make it possible.”The Just Transition Fund is on a mission to create economic opportunity for the frontline communities and workers hardest hit by the transition away from coal. JTF is guided by a belief in the power of communities, supporting locally-led solutions and helping elevate the voices of transition leaders.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Digital equity, one mile of cable at a time on Dec 7, 2021.