Dear Commons Community,
It is estimated that about twenty percent of American households do not have broadband services. In some large urban and small rural areas, the percentage is as high as thirty percent. The Federal Communication Commission is looking to assist to reduce these percentages by providing subsidies to families who cannot afford broadband service. The rational is that not having access to broadband is a detriment to school children who increasingly need it for homework and school assignments. As reported in the New York Times:
“With many educators pushing for students to use resources on the Internet with class work, the federal government is now grappling with a stark disparity in access to technology, between students who have high-speed Internet at home and an estimated five million families who are without it and who are struggling to keep up.
The challenge is felt across the nation. Some students in Coachella, Calif., and Huntsville, Ala., depend on school buses that have free Wi-Fi to complete their homework. The buses are sometimes parked in residential neighborhoods overnight so that children can connect and continue studying. In cities like Detroit, Miami and New Orleans, where as many as one-third of homes do not have broadband, children crowd libraries and fast-food restaurants to use free hot spots.
The divide is driving action at the federal level. Members of the Federal Communications Commission are expected to vote next month on repurposing a roughly $2 billion-a-year phone subsidy program, known as Lifeline, to include subsidies for broadband services in low-income homes.
“This is what I call the homework gap, and it is the cruelest part of the digital divide,” said Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democratic member of the commission who has pushed to overhaul the Lifeline program.
Ms. Rosenworcel cited research showing that seven in 10 teachers now assign homework that requires web access. Yet one-third of kindergartners through 12th graders in the United States, from low-income and rural households, are unable to go online from home. The Obama administration announced in July its own program to help address the problem, deploying free and affordable broadband into public housing.
The Lifeline plan has drawn strong criticism from the two Republicans among the five F.C.C. commissioners, and from some lawmakers, who say the program, which was introduced in 1985 to bring phone services to low-income families, has been wasteful and was abused.
In 2008, when the commission added subsidies for mobile-phone services to discounts for landlines, some homes started double-billing the program, and the budget for the fund ballooned. Various investigations, including a government review in early 2015, questioned the effectiveness of the phone program and whether the commission had done enough to monitor for abuse.
But advocacy groups for children and minorities have backed the F.C.C. plan, saying it will be important in preventing students from falling further behind their peers.
“For young people, broadband is like the air we breathe,” said James P. Steyer, chief executive of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit group known for its reviews and age-based ratings of videos, websites and books that has campaigned for the changes in Lifeline. His organization earns licensing fees from Internet service providers that may stand to gain from the expansion of the F.C.C. program.
“It’s essential for school and future job opportunity,” Mr. Steyer said. “So it is desperately important that we make broadband affordable for low-income families and minorities, because we can’t be a society of haves and have-nots.”
Broadband has indeed become a lifeline for students to succeed in school. The FCC should move forward with this initiative.
Tony
