In an interview last year, when she lived in a New York City shelter with her two school-age daughters, Crystal Berroa told the Democrat & Chronicle newspaper of Rochester, New York, about the difficulty she has logging on to their remote learning classrooms on school-issued iPads.
“The structural inequalities of the digital divide rest on ‘digital red-lining’ that is built on top of urban red-lining.”
“If one (iPad) connects and the other doesn’t, I’m screwed,” Berroa said. “There’s nothing I can do. Sometimes it doesn’t connect at all during the day. My daughter is a first grader. She’s learning how to read right now. And I have no idea what’s going on.”
It is not an uncommon predicament. In 2020, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) found that twenty-one million Americans lacked access to high-speed Internet; of these, 5.1 million homes were in rural areas while the rest were non-rural. In response, city governments and local groups throughout the country are attempting to address the digital divide in different, innovative ways.
Joshua Breitbart, a leadership in government fellow at the Open Society Foundations and New York City’s former deputy chief technology officer, tells The Progressive that “the structural inequalities of the digital divide rest on ‘digital red-lining’ that is built on top of urban red-lining.” He calls for delivering broadband “with a real eye at repairing and understanding the need for justice, of the inequity and trauma built into so many urban communities.”
What follows are snapshots of efforts being undertaken by nine U.S. cities that illustrate different strategies being adopted to end the urban digital divide.
Baltimore, Maryland
In 2018, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 40.7 percent of city households—96,000 households—lacked wireless Internet service and that 75,000 households—one in three—did not have a desktop or laptop computer. To address this situation, the Baltimore Digital Equity Coalition was formed in March 2020 as a backbone support organization focused on collaboration. It now has more than sixty participating organizations. Using FCC funding through the Emergency Broadband Benefit, the coalition offers participants a $50 per month home Internet credit.
Chicago, Illinois
In June 2020, Chicago Public Schools launched “Chicago Connected,” a $50 million plan to provide students with no-cost broadband Internet over the next four years. The plan, said Mayor Lori Lighfoot, “has been successful in ensuring our students and their families have the resources they need to attend and engage in school during this unprecedented time.” It purports to be on track to reach 100,000 students by the end of the 2020-2021 school year.
Cleveland, Ohio
The 2019 American Community Survey reported that about 80,000 city households lacked wire line broadband connection and 31 percent didn’t have Internet subscriptions at any speed, including mobile data plans. DigitalC, a nonprofit wireless Internet provider, undertook a pilot project—“Connect the Unconnected”—providing devices and Internet access to more than 500 households in 156 public housing units and a homeless shelter. Earlier this year, it reached 1,100 residents and received grants of $20 million from two local foundations.
New York, New York
In January 2020, the city released an “Internet Master Plan” that declared: “The private market has failed to deliver the Internet in a way that works for all New Yorkers.” In July 2020, the city announced it would “make a historic $157 million investment in ending digital redlining and providing high-speed Internet, including $87 million redirected from the NYPD budget.”
“What we did for New York is develop a plan based on neighborhood scale,” says Breitbart, the city’s former Deputy Chief Technology Officer. “This was based on an understanding that there was no way to deliver on a citywide infrastructure.”
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Only 47 percent of households in the city’s low- and moderate-income tracts subscribe to broadband, well below households in middle- and upper-income neighborhoods (63 percent and 77 percent, respectively). Households in predominantly Latinx neighborhoods have the lowest subscription rates (47 percent), followed by 52 percent of households in predominantly Black neighborhoods and 76 percent of households in predominantly white tracts.
Alex Wermer-Colan of Temple University says that last year a grassroots group of volunteers from organizations around the city started a wireless mesh network project, working with an independent wireless service provider named PhillyWisper. He calls the service “net-neutral, affordable, point-to-point, and geographically well-positioned to provide WiFi” to the Norris Park Square area. “It’s a real community effort,” he says.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
In 2018, around 30 percent of city residents didn’t have home access to the Internet. Like many other cities, minority and low-income communities have lower broadband subscription rates than the wider population. In response, Every1online, a community-based, nonprofit wireless Internet provider, was launched in 2015 to provide no-cost residential Internet access in the greater Pittsburgh area, especially directed at households with K-12 students.
San Antonio, Texas
The city has a total of 93,237 households without broadband of any type. Researchers found that “income disparities within the city decrease the use of broadband access at home.” To address this structural problem, San Antonio is investing $27 million for the “Connected Beyond the Classroom” program to ensure students are connected to their school networks, using federal CARES Act funding.
Tucson, Arizona
Some 32,000 city households lack reliable Internet access and more than 10,000 households have no Internet connection at all. In response, the Community Wireless Program was launched to provide wireless access to support remote learning, teleworking, and access to virtual services. The city used $4.4 million from the CARES Act to provide routers to eligible residents, including families with at least one school-aged child or college student in the home as well as someone sixty years of age or older or someone who is immunocompromised.
Whether the United States can close the digital divide—in both cities and rural areas—may depend on the ongoing Congressional battle over the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. Last month, the Senate passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that included $65 billion for broadband.
“Other funding in the bill, like the Digital Equity Act, can do good work in urban areas, but as long as it leaves the incumbent business model in complete dominance of the market, even with subsidies to make it more affordable, we will never have universal service,” Breitbart says.
But questions are being raised as to how much of the funding will go to cities. Wermer-Colan worries that the infrastructure bill now before Congress won’t really close the digital divide.
“All this is very unclear, but the more important question is where is that money going? Is it going to private monopolies?” he asks. “The earlier program was a great program in the sense that it was the best the city could do in an emergency, but it is in no way a viable future plan to end the digital divide.”
This article was edited after publication to clarify that it was a grassroots group of volunteers, and not the city of Philadelphia, that started a wireless mesh network project, working with an independent wireless service provider named PhillyWisper.