Use Pandemic as Opportunity to Address Digital Divide, Rosenworcel Again Asks

During the pandemic, equipping school buses with Wi-Fi hot spots and placing them outside students' homes can help fill in the gap, speakers said. Francis Marion School in Perry County, Alabama, discussed the bus option when the school closed down recently. "We can't get hot spots," said Principal Cathy Trimble. "Everyone wants to get hot spots now." Getting internet access is a challenge for districts that don't have enough resources to acquire textbooks for all their students, she said: "We're seeking equity."

Rosenworcel wants the FCC to designate E-rate support to enable Wi-Fi on school bus rides, especially in rural areas: "Turn ride time into work time for everyone who needs it." For solving the homework gap, "my solution is anything that works," Rosenworcel said. She's excited about proposals to open the 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi. "We know Wi-Fi democratizes broadband access," she said.

Policymakers at the state, local and federal level should do a better job coordinating to help bridge the digital divide, Trimble said. Broadband subsidy programs should be more widely promoted so small rural communities are considered and included, she said: "We have local and state personnel who seem to forget about us. We need people to advocate for our needs." She called for focus on long-term solutions, not temporary handouts.

The FCC and states should better coordinate broadband deployment efforts, Rosenworcel said. Fixing broadband maps is crucial to getting everyone connected, she said. "We need people in the states who know where service is and is not." Focus on urban adoption rates, too, she advised. Rosenworcel wants to "modernize and right-size" the Lifeline program "to meet this moment" by introducing an emergency broadband service as part of Lifeline. "I want the FCC to solve the homework gap, and I think we can do it with the authority we already have under the Telecommunications Act of 1996," she said, plus additional funding from Congress. "Let's not waste this crisis. Let's do this right now."

"We have to keep making noise" to raise awareness of the need to close the digital divide, said Brookings fellow Nicol Turner Lee. "Keep this top of mind."

Rosenworcel was right to call for reporting from broadband providers similar to what they have to provide during disasters and other emergencies (see 2003310075), said Jon Sallet of the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, Wednesday on a Fiber Broadband Association webinar.

Networks weren’t “built in every case to be the most robust in the nation, not of enterprise quality, not with the kind of multi-homing redundancy that big enterprises have,” said Sallet. They're “now playing an absolutely critical role in the way our economy runs, the way our society runs, the way people get healthcare, the way students learn.” The FCC needs to update consumers on “what is working” with networks and what isn’t, he said. “Not every place in America is the same,” he said: “There are different technologies.” Sallet noted reports that more businesses are likely to permanently shift to telework.

Videoconference apps like Zoom create more demands on networks (see 2004070053) than watching Netflix or playing a videogame, said Gary Bolton, Adtran vice president-global marketing. Netflix is “rate adaptive” and will “degrade gracefully” depending on demand, Bolton said. Zoom uses up to 2.4 GB/hour, he said. A low quality Netflix stream uses only 300 MB/hour, a Fortnite game 100 MB and World of Warcraft 40 MB, he said.

When connections are slow, last-mile connections are where the network often breaks down, Bolton said. Wireless-only connections struggle the most with Zoom and similar services, while fiber is most robust, he said. He predicted the world will change as result of the pandemic, and having access to broadband will only become more important.