The events of the past few months brought an immense wave of change and momentum in the U.S., from the presidential election to the Senate run-offs in Georgia, from the Capitol insurrection to Inauguration day. If you are like me, you might have found yourself breathless from time to time over the pace of change, struggling to keep an eye on priorities for 2021 while navigating the hectic and often anxious moments of the recent months. As the dust settles on 2020 and the sun begins to rise on the Biden-Harris administration, it is time to set an American broadband agenda. 

The new administration should know that there are many thoughtful and principled voices in the digital inclusion choir. I encourage the Biden administration to create channels for listening to and consulting these organizations. In addition to the Marconi Society, I recommend the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society and the SHLB Coalition, both of whom have put together strong recommendations related to this issue.

Like both of these peer organizations, the Marconi Society believes that access to affordable, reliable, and sufficient Internet, and the opportunities it provides, is a basic human right. The Biden administration has the opportunity to fundamentally change the landscape for digital inclusion through funding, policy, programs, and oversight. 

With the one-year anniversary of the first U.S. COVID-19 case swiftly approaching, affordable, reliable Internet access has never been more relevant or had more impact on everyday Americans. In line with its commitment to social justice, the administration has a mandate to address the digital inequality that plagues its residents—with bold, decisive leadership, this albatross could become the country’s greatest asset, with intersections in socioeconomic, health, and education outcomes across the board. The time is now.

1. Mount a multi-front war against digital exclusion

Federal efforts should extend beyond the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to other departments to ensure broadband access is integrated into all efforts by all branches and departments of government. Just as the Benton Institute has called for a “unified broadband infrastructure agenda,” so do we at the Marconi Society recommend a holistic and integrated approach to broadband infrastructure investment and deployment. We must leverage the expertise and unique lens of individual government agencies to create a consolidated effort to carry out a multi-front campaign against digital exclusion. 

• The FCC should create new definitions for broadband in consultation with both communities and technologists and set a plan to revisit the definition every few years as technology advances. The new definition should include specific standards for performance, which would allow for consistent and verifiable benchmarking.
• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) should insist on pricing transparency for both fixed and wireless broadband and move to simplify the fee structures to make it easier to compare the cost of services and encourage competition.
• Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Federal Housing Authority (FHA) should ensure all federal properties, new construction, and multi-family dwellings are fitted with the infrastructure needed to allow broadband services to reach residents.
• States should ensure that residents are made aware of any programs that support or subsidize broadband access for consumers. For example, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) workforce program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) both count the cost of a computer (up to a certain amount) as an eligible expense—something many program managers are unaware of.
• The federal government should resource the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to reconstitute the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP) to provide direct support to community-based digital skills training programs throughout underserved areas of the U.S.—both rural and urban.

2. Integrate broadband skills training and subsidy programs into plans to modernize social service delivery

Our social program administration is antiquated and prohibits effective case management of government services. The cost of this to counties, states, and the federal government is astronomical measured in dollars and far more costly when measured by the cost of stress, time, and social outcomes to residents. We cannot afford to delay the modernization of program delivery for SNAP, TANF, Medicaid, and Medicare any further. We need a fully accessible online service management portal where residents can apply for, receive application feedback, and manage social service benefits.

If such a system existed, broadband subsidies could be used as an incentive for residents, resulting in cost savings to the state or county by moving more control and management of services online. In my report Connecting Cuyahoga we identified the cost of an offline transaction as $3.91, compared to an average cost of $17.11 for transactions in person (presumably at a government office) or over the phone.. 

Increasing the number of online social service transactions  not only creates direct cost savings for states and counties but also contributes to economic growth, prosperity, and overall community health while reducing the burden on service recipients to take off work, travel downtown, or wait in lengthy phone queues—making government programs more transparent, accessible, and responsive with fewer redundancies and resources.

In order to get more residents to manage their government services online, social services case managers should offer a broadband subsidy and other support programs for equipment and skills training in collaboration with other community organizations. By offering subsidized computers, Internet connections, and free digital skills training, residents would be incentivized to use online case management in the long term while states and counties would benefit from significant cost savings that would cover the additional investment in broadband. Additionally, more residents would have affordable, consistent Internet access, allowing them the opportunities and advantages the network provides.

3. Create a digital inclusion data collection and monitoring effort to inform policy and investment decisions at the federal, state, and local levels

A select few policymakers at the federal level have been directing broadband policy and investment decisions for years—often with significant influence from powerful telecommunications lobbyists. It is time to empower communities to report on their own needs through the creation of an open-source, transparent, crowd-sourced data collection model. This new model must allow for local and user-contributed data in order to create a robust, multi-layered system of reporting with accountability to the communities it will impact.The Biden administration should reach out to experts in the field and convene a task force to plan the creation of a distributed national broadband data collection strategy. 

This strategy should include:

• A program to provide standard, recurring measurements to track network performance of community stakeholder institutions, particularly those providing community access, over long periods of time to produce results with statistical confidence.
• The creation of a research panel to review and approve testing methodologies.
  • All approved methodologies should be open-source and fully transparent and accessible by all interested parties.
• The formation of a data-trust structure that allows residents, community stakeholders, and others to share, validate, and annotate reported measurements and data to provide context and situational information leading to a better understanding of the metrics.
• Subsidized broadband services that include a local router-based test to provide network analytics data on a set schedule.
• Requirements that all collected network measurement data should be fully accessible to the public for research purposes and be supported by resources and tools for users with average technical skills to visualize and use the data.
• An interdisciplinary approach to data collection, including qualitative measurements that may offer useful insights, such as residents’ attitudes towards Internet affordability or network priorities for local businesses.

4. Provide funding where it’s needed most

The current average cost of broadband in the U.S. is $50–70. This is unaffordable for many of the country’s unconnected who are far more likely to have limited means or live on a fixed income. 

The vast majority of the unconnected also qualify for and receive social service benefits. Since all historical broadband subsidy programs (such as Lifeline and other Internet Service Provider (ISP)-specific programs) use social service use as a way to qualify applicants, it makes sense to connect these channels to strengthen the management and administration of such programs. Aligning a federal broadband benefit with social service administration creates an avenue to direct funding towards states and local communities where local ecosystems can be leveraged for additional service support and benefit. Following from this, we recommend that the Biden administration: 

• Provide a short-term stimulus to social service administration agencies for the express use of providing connectivity support in the form of device subsidies and digital skills training, which after a period will continue to be supported by the cost savings generated by moving in-person and phone-based transactions online.

• Provide funding to local community organizations at the county and city levels to provide connectivity support such as equipment refurbishers, computer training programs, and benefits navigators.
• Provide resources, funding, and training to community leaders to assist in the collection of broadband network analytics through an approved open-source collection portal to inform local broadband infrastructure investment.