The following transcript has been edited for length and readability. Listen to the entire discussion here on The Broadband Bunch.
Craig:
Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of The Broadband Bunch. I’m Craig Corbin. The term digital divide is defined as the gulf between those who have ready access to the internet and those who do not and is very much a reality for a growing number of Americans. Even prior to COVID-19, being able to easily utilize internet technology was not a luxury, but rather an essential requirement for our daily existence. Tack on the global pandemic with the reality of a largely remote workforce, demand for telehealth and virtual learning for students everywhere, and you quickly see the enormity of the digital divide.
Craig:
Our guest today writes about the intersection of business, politics, and the economy for Vox, Recode, and The Goods, and recently tackled the topic of how broadband internet should be accessible and affordable for everyone. It is a pleasure to welcome business and politics reporter for Vox, Emily Stewart.
Craig:
What was the genesis of this particular story about universal and affordable broadband access?
Emily:
This is one where honestly at Vox, we were working on a series of stories about connectivity. Talking to one of my editors the question came up, why doesn’t everybody have the internet? Because especially right now, we’re seeing all of these stories amid the pandemic – kids without internet at home trying to learn, people are trying to work from home and they can’t, or as something as simple as looking for a job, finding an apartment or signing up for a government service – everything requires the internet, now more than ever. This question came up, so we know that everybody needs the internet, but why doesn’t everybody have it? That’s really how we landed at this kind of journey.
Craig:
For many, when you use the term digital divide, there’s an automatic assumption that it’s just rural America that suffers from the digital divide. That’s not the reality though. What did you find as you began to research this?
Broadband Access – Broadband Affordability
Emily:
Honestly, coming into this story to be completely frank, I thought, “Oh, it’s another rural broadband story.” Not that that’s not important, but I feel like we’ve seen a thousand of those stories all of the time, that someone in the middle of Maine or Wisconsin or Wyoming doesn’t have the internet. But what I found, and I think that is really under-discussed, is that it’s also an urban problem. It’s not just somebody in the country, it’s also people in cities and it’s also a two-part problem. Part of it is certainly access. A wire does or does not run by my house. It is also affordability. Ultimately, if the internet bill is $60 that I don’t have, I don’t really have access to the internet. It’s a two-part problem. It’s a rural problem, it’s an urban problem, it’s an access problem, it’s an affordability problem.
Craig:
When you look at how the internet is interwoven into literally every aspect of our daily lives, something as simple as making a job application is virtually impossible in many settings, unless you have that sort of connectivity. The trickle-down effect is immense. What examples did you find in the process of putting this story together that dealt with those challenges?
Emily:
I spoke to a librarian here in Brooklyn about her experiences, and she was telling me they’ve had a lot of people outside of their buildings during the coronavirus crisis because obviously the indoor libraries here in the city are not open. They’re just trying to catch Wi-Fi. She was kind of going through what people come into the library to use the internet for, because it’s also a computer, right? Yes, you have your phone or a lot of people do have a phone, but you can’t exactly update your resume on your phone or not easily, right? I think there are just a lot of things like yes, it’s okay that you use your phone for entertainment maybe, but if you need to do your homework, that’s not really helpful. I have a job where I type all of the time.
Emily:
I cannot write a story on my cellphone. It really is something where it’s in so many parts of our lives that we don’t think about it. If right now you need to file for unemployment, you need the internet to do that, and you need an easy way to do that. Especially as we see that so many unemployment systems are not working very well in the United States. It really is in so many parts of our lives that, on its face, we don’t think about it as much as we probably should.
Craig:
In the process of talking with people, (you’ve mentioned the librarian that you spoke with) there are examples of people who are really taking an initiative, who taking the lead in getting internet for their communities. That had to be a heartwarming or a certainly interesting component to your story.
Emily:
Another librarian I spoke with up in the Catskills was telling me the same story. They have people in the parking lots. She really sees the internet as a social justice issue for her. She oversees about nine libraries up in the Catskills, her name is Grace Viario, and she was talking about what she’s been trying to do with legislatures in her area. She is trying to find a partner to try and get a company to come in and work with them, to get more people in the area the internet. What she would tell me is, “obviously for a company, this is not super lucrative for them, they don’t necessarily want to come in here and give everybody the internet. But for us, it’s a social justice issue and we have things to offer them.”
Mesh Broadband Networks in Urban Areas
Emily:
She said they have multiple buildings that they feel like they could offer to someone to try and connect more of the community. So that was really neat. And then I spoke to someone who’s doing a mesh network, where antennas talk to each other and individuals put in these networks and build them out. He was saying that, even if they’re putting in a handful of antennas a week, this is a way for the community to sort of take it back into their hands. It really is the people who are on the ground, who are seeing why this is important and really trying to help the people around them.
Craig:
People need to understand what the current state of affairs is where they live, be it locally, be it statewide because of the hurdles that exist for providers to bring service to certain areas. We want to encourage people to take this golden opportunity to employ the political will of as many diverse demographic groups as possible to get broadband to the forefront.
Emily:
It certainly seems like in the pandemic we’ve seen so many issues in our country really come to the forefront. That this is an emergency in so many ways, and [broadband] certainly seems like one of them. And broadband is one where if you ask most people, “Do you think everybody should have access to the internet?” It seems like an obvious, “Yes.” And so then the question is, why don’t we have that? But I think part of the solution to this problem is more people understanding how important it is. It’s not just for the individuals without access, it’s also for society at large. Everybody having the internet is good for the economy. Everybody having the internet is good for the American education system. We don’t want a generation of kids shut out of education because they couldn’t go online for a year.
Craig:
In the process of doing your story on how broadband internet could be accessible and affordable for everyone, there were success stories that you found. Tell us, for example, what our friends in Chattanooga have accomplished.
EPB vs. Comcast
Emily:
Chattanooga was definitely the one that was kind of the big story that most people talked about. It really is a neat story, and I think an interesting blueprint. Basically in 2010, the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, which is their city owned utility, better known as EPB, started to offer high speed internet to all residents through a smart grid. Obviously, this was expensive – it cost them about $300 million, a hundred million of which came from the federal government. And it was complicated. Also, (and I hope this is something that we can talk about a little bit more), the corporations that sell us the internet don’t necessarily want to compete with the public sector. And that’s part of what happened in Chattanooga -Comcast actually sued the city to try and stop them. Ultimately Chattanooga won that battle.
Emily:
They brought super high-speed internet to much of the city. But of course, they didn’t win every battle, so they still cannot expand. There’s really good internet beyond their footprint, so basically a way to think about this is if I’m a kid who goes to school in Chattanooga but lives in the country and their internet doesn’t go out to the country, EPB can’t extend it to my house. They have to stick to their footprint. But it is a really neat project. Now you’ve also seen during the pandemic they’ve been able to offer free internet to underprivileged kids and they’re going to do it for 10 years. So this is a project that has really long legs in terms of helping the community.
Craig:
To that point, regarding the interaction between public and private entities, what type of balance should there be between public and private entities to help tackle the digital divide?
Emily:
I certainly don’t have the answers to this, this is a giant policy question. What I discovered, at least in reporting and talking to people about this, is that if it were lucrative for everyone to have the internet, everyone would have the internet. Telecom companies, they want to make money and that’s what they’re supposed to do. That’s what capitalism is, that’s what they’re in the business of doing. There are limitations to that, because it’s not lucrative for everyone to have the internet. If it’s going to cost tens of thousands of dollars to extend a wire to one house in the country, then they won’t do it. It seems like there really needs to be a public component here, and what that looks like is definitely debatable, there are answers at municipal level, at the local level.
Emily:
There are also perhaps bigger answers on the federal level. There are plenty of proposals. For example what we saw in the presidential election, Elizabeth Warren proposed a public option, and Bernie Sanders running on the idea that the internet should become a public utility. Now these are big sweeping solutions that there are not on the legislative table today, but it certainly seems like something where the private sector cannot do all of this. They’re not willing to, and we shouldn’t expect them to. And so we need the public sector to have a role.
$80 Billion Toward Expanding Broadband
Craig:
There are those who probably wished that the country had taken on the internet similar to the way that our interstate highway system was first designed and envisioned back in the 50s, with the mandate to cover as much of the country as possible. Would there also need to be sort of the think globally/act locally mentality for people on this topic?
Emily:
Again, it’s tough, but I think right now the sense that I got, at least reporting for this, was that there are obviously some really big sweeping policy measures that could happen. The ones that I mentioned, also Representative Jim Clyburn (D-SC) has a proposal that would put $80 billion toward expanding broadband across the country, and also provide some sort of a subsidy for people. That way telecom providers are happy because they’re still getting paid, they don’t care if the government’s paying them or I’m paying them, right? But there also is a lot that can happen on a local level.
Emily:
When people start to see what can happen on the local level, whether it be a mesh network or what happened in Chattanooga or in plenty of other cities and localities that have dealt with this problem on their own, it really does build momentum so that there can be changes at the state level, so that there can be changes at the federal level. Because right now we do have pretty powerful corporate lobby that is blocking some of this.
Craig:
You mentioned the opportunity for additional bills to be passed with more funding earmarked for broadband. We’re on the cusp of the RDOF auctions, which will bring upwards of 20 1/2 billion dollars earmarked for broadband. But part of that equation is that it’s based on data that in many cases is not completely accurate with regard to what areas are unserved or underserved. And so the challenge remains, yes, there’s money to be spent for it, but is it going to be spent in the best possible way. That’s a huge challenge in looking to the next five, 10 years on how the country tackles this topic. Obviously you saw the good, the bad, the ugly in putting this story together. What are one or two things that left you optimistic about the future of broadband connectivity in the United States?
Broadband Access Requires Competition
Emily:
The people that care about this, really care about it. This is one story where we had a lot of people asking, “Do you want to talk about this?” Or, “What about this?” Or, “have you seen this other thing?” It seems like an arena where people really want to make a difference, and the people that are active in this space and the activists, they know the solutions, and they’re really working hard toward them, and you don’t see that in every arena. I think that’s really heartening.
Emily:
There is really an awakening, and this might be my own personal optimism, but I think people are paying more attention to corporate power in the United States, and what it means to have [that power] in a really lax anti-trust system. We’re talking about the Googles and the Facebooks, but we also need to be talking about the Verizon’s and the AT&Ts and the Comcasts of the world. I have one internet provider basically, and I live in a major city. I am at the whim of them. A lot of people have this experience. And I think the more people recognize what it means when we don’t have competition, that eventually starts to make a difference.
Craig:
When providers are in the position of not having to worry about competition, not worrying about whether or not there is somewhere else for their customers to go, then it’s a very different ballgame. It’s obvious that part of the incentive in this particular story was your own example, your own experience, in one of the major metropolitan areas of the world.
Emily:
This is why I feel the internet and internet access is an interesting topic – everybody I know complains about their internet, that they have bad internet and it costs too much. This is really an arena that people kind of understand what’s happening, even if they don’t think about it. There are a lot of arenas where we see this happening, right? Probably for your cell phone provider too, right? How many options do you have? Is it really awesome service? And there are things that are just like, they are really expensive and they make our daily lives worse than they could, if maybe we had more options so that we could shop around and force companies to compete with each other for a business.
Craig:
Is this story one that you could see readdressing at some point down the road?
Emily:
I definitely hope so. This is one where it feels like people care about it, and it’s also something that has so much impact in people’s day-to-day lives. Although we’re really “seeing” this now, it’s always been a problem. Especially right now, its super important to tell the story of what is happening in every aspect of the economy, as how people are living. Right now, people are really living online, whether it is entertainment, whether it is at work, school, literally everything is on the internet. I barely leave my house at this point. It’s a really important subject and there are just so many cool projects going on around the country that that really merit being highlighted.
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