Digital Inclusion

Digital Equity Planning Process Should Include Local Communities, Says NTIA Official

Engaging local communities can build trust, which is an important factor in increasing adoption.

Published

9 months ago

April 6, 2023

WASHINGTON, April 6, 2023 — Government entities and local community organizations must work together to maximize the long-term impact of federal digital equity funding, and should include underserved communities in the planning process to pave the way for universal adoption, according to experts at a Broadband Breakfast event on Wednesday.

“We have to we have to hear from all voices — not just the higher-level government organizations, but the organizations that are serving our covered population, the people in the field doing this work and those lived experts who are actually experiencing some of those barriers,” said Susan Corbett, executive director of the National Digital Equity Center.

Amy Huffman, Policy Director, National Digital Inclusion Alliance

The three programs created by the Digital Equity Act build on top of the $42.5 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program to ensure that communities have the necessary resources and skills to fully utilize the internet.

“Aligning and integrating [digital equity initiatives] with the BEAD program is essential,” said Angela Thi Bennett, digital equity director for the NTIA. “States should be doing this work in tandem, making sure that the BEAD plans and digital equity plans aren’t siloed… so that everyone is working towards that same goal of universal access.”

States, territories and tribal governments are currently utilizing funds from the $60 million State Planning Program to develop digital equity plans. The implementation of these plans will be supported by the $1.44 billion State Capacity Program, which is set to launch in 2024.

The $1.25 billion Competitive Program will be open to a wider range of entities — including local municipalities, nonprofit organizations and community anchor institutions — and is expected to begin accepting applications within a month of the first Capacity awards.

This program can help ensure that any potential gaps in state plans are filled by the “incredible grassroots work that happens from people local closest to the communities,” said David Keyes, digital equity advisor for the City of Seattle.

Community involvement is key to sustainable, effective planning

For each of the Digital Equity Act programs, engagement with local communities is important for ensuring long-term sustainability, Bennett said. “We need to make sure that we’re building the capacity of the organizations that are serving these communities so this work can continue.”

“There’s a lot of requirements and not a lot of time, but we really want to make sure that we support states to reach that end goal of creating digital equity ecosystems across the country that are sustainable,” agreed Amy Huffman, policy director for the National Digital Inclusion Alliance.

To achieve this goal, Huffman advocated for prioritizing community engagement “first and foremost,” from the initial planning stages through implementation.

“It should not only be a checking a box, but it needs to be meaningful and continuous,” she said. “States and territories and the tribal organizations should be co-creating these plans with communities.”

In addition to supporting the sustainability of state plans, this local engagement will improve the plans themselves by ensuring that they “reflect the actual needs and the realities that are on the ground of the individual communities,” Huffman added.

Panelists call for ACP extension, emphasizing importance to other initiatives

One of the major focuses of digital equity planning — particularly for local stakeholders — is increasing adoption rates.

“We know that broadband passes probably about 95 percent of households, yet only 77 percent of people subscribe,” said Deborah Lathen, president of Lathen Consulting LLC. “The focus has got to be on affordability, because we know it’s basically lower income people who do not subscribe to broadband.”

While the Affordable Connectivity Program was designed to address this very issue, many experts have predicted that it will run out of funding by mid-2024.

“The extension of ACP is urgent,” Lathen said “One of the worst things you can do is sign people up and then drop the program, because I think another major factor impacting adoption is trust.”

The collapse of the ACP could also impact the efficacy of other federal connectivity initiatives, Huffman warned.

“The Digital Equity Act is $2.75 billion — it’s a lot of money — but that’s not enough to cover affordability, devices, skills, everything for the foreseeable future,” she said. “It needs the Affordable Connectivity Program to be alongside it in order for it to be as effective as it can possibly be.”

Despite its importance, the ACP alone is not enough to ensure universal connectivity, Bennett said. “There are still segments of our population that don’t qualify for ACP, but can’t afford the internet,” Bennett said. “If we are truly wanting to accomplish internet for all, we also need to make sure that [those segments] are also able to receive access.”

Our Broadband Breakfast Live Online events take place on Wednesday at 12 Noon ET. Watch the event on Broadband Breakfast, or REGISTER HERE to join the conversation.

Wednesday, April 5, 2023, 12 Noon ET – State Digital Equity Plans

The Digital Equity Act, part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021, provides $2.75 billion for three grant programs aiming to promote digital equity. The $60 million State Planning Program, $1.44 billion State Capacity Program and $1.25 Competitive Program will fund a variety of digital equity projects across the country, from planning to implementation. In this session of Broadband Breakfast Live Online, state broadband leaders will talk about how their states are approaching the digital equity planning process and what they hope to accomplish with the federal funding.

Panelists

Angela Thi Bennett, Digital Equity Director, NTIA
Susan Corbett, Executive Director, National Digital Equity Center
Amy Huffman, Policy Director, National Digital Inclusion Alliance
David Keyes, Digital Equity Advisor, City of Seattle
Deborah Lathen, President, Lathen Consulting LLC
Drew Clark (moderator), Editor and Publisher, Broadband Breakfast

Panelist resources

Angela Thi Bennett serves as the first-ever digital equity director at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration within the U.S. Department of Commerce, where she directs the allocation of $2.75 billion from the Digital Equity Act and helps develop guidelines for states to equitably use these funds. Her vast community and public sector experience include leading East Cleveland’s department of community and economic development, serving as superintendent of a community school in Cleveland and serving on the Ohio State Board of Education. In her previous work at a community-based internet service provider, she was instrumental in growing the customer base and helping over 1,500 individuals benefit from affordable digital access during the height of the pandemic.

Susan Corbett founded the National Digital Equity Center in 2017, collaborating with local and global change makers, relentlessly driving disruptive strategies to close the digital divide in Maine and across the United States. She serves as the Executive Director, and is a preeminent authority and advocate for digital equity and digital inclusion. She is currently collaborating with the State of Maine to create their statewide Digital Equity and Digital Inclusion Plan.

Amy Huffman serves as policy director at National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA). She is a public servant, systems thinker, innovative policy expert, and a storyteller with a passion for digital equity that spans more than 10 years. Amy was the first digital inclusion and policy manager in the State of North Carolina, and she has since grown as a leader with a national portfolio, including advocating for, influencing, and educating stakeholders about the $2.75-billion Digital Equity Act.

David Keyes works at the intersection of information and communications technologies, race and social justice, and community capacity building. He has over 25 years experience guiding the City of Seattle’s digital equity strategic planning, advocacy, programs and evaluation. He was the first community technology planner in the country and developed the City’s Technology Access and Adoption Indicators research. In 2016, he received the inaugural Charles Benton Digital Equity Champion Award from the National Digital Inclusion Alliance and the Benton Foundation.

Deborah Lathen is an attorney and policymaker who has been working on digital equity issues for over three decades. She was appointed to a Senior Executive position in the Clinton Administration as Chief of the Cable Services Bureau, Federal Communications Commission, where she led a bureau of 112 lawyers, economists, accountants, engineers and economists in setting policies and crafting regulations covering cable, satellite TV, internet and equipment providers. In 2001, she founded Lathen Consulting, LLC where she advises clients on telecommunications regulatory and policy matters.

Drew Clark (moderator) is CEO of Breakfast Media LLC. He has led the Broadband Breakfast community since 2008. An early proponent of better broadband, better lives, he initially founded the Broadband Census crowdsourcing campaign for broadband data. As Editor and Publisher, Clark presides over the leading media company advocating for higher-capacity internet everywhere through topical, timely and intelligent coverage. Clark also served as head of the Partnership for a Connected Illinois, a state broadband initiative.

Graphic from Adobe Stock used with permission

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Em McPhie

Reporter Em McPhie studied communication design and writing at Washington University in St. Louis, where she was a managing editor for the student newspaper. In addition to agency and freelance marketing experience, she has reported extensively on Section 230, big tech, and rural broadband access. She is a founding board member of Code Open Sesame, an organization that teaches computer programming skills to underprivileged children.

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Digital Inclusion

Provider Says FCC Should Freeze Affordable Connectivity Program Transfers

After February 7, the FCC is not going to require ISPs to accept ACP transfers.

Published

3 days ago

January 13, 2024

Ted Hearn

Photo of FCC Deputy Bureau Chief Noah Stein from Fordham University

WASHINGTON, January 13, 2024 – The Federal Communications Commission will start to shut down a key internet subsidy program for low-income households early next month, but one provider thinks the agency needs to do more.

The FCC said Thursday that the Affordable Connectivity Program will stop accepting new enrollments after February 7. New internet access providers can’t join the program after that date, either.

According to MVNO provider TruConnect, the FCC needs to broaden its plan. The virtual wireless company said the agency should freeze the ability of current ACP enrollees to transfer their benefits to another internet provider after February 7.

“A benefit transfer freeze during this time is in the best interest of ACP households, ACP providers, program integrity and program efficiency until funding either expires or is reappropriated,” TruConnect’s lawyer Judson H. Hill said in a filing posted on the FCC’s website today.

Hill said he communicated TruConnect’s position on Jan. 9 to Noah Stein, Deputy Bureau Chief of the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau, which issued the FCC’s 15-page ACP shutdown order two days later.

FCC’s shutdown order restricts the transfer of ACP benefits

According to the FCC, about 22 million low-income households have enrolled in the ACP, which Congress established in late 2021 with $14.2 billion to take $30 off monthly internet bills. The program’s last full month will be April without new funding by Congress, the FCC said.

The FCC’s rules provide that “households may transfer their ACP service benefit once per calendar month, with limited exceptions.”

In Thursday’s order, the FCC said it would not “require providers to perform transfer-in transactions for enrolled ACP households seeking to transfer their benefit.”

Instead, the FCC said it will allow “providers to choose whether to accept transfers after the ACP enrollment freeze.”

TruConnect didn’t provide any specifics behind its support for a transfer freeze.

In his discussion with the FCC’s Stein, Hill said he “emphasized that once program enrollments are frozen, that to achieve an orderly program wind down until funding expires that the [FCC] should also freeze ACP household subscriber benefit transfers between ACP programs providers.”

TruConnect’s website is effectively a portal to sign up ACP households and includes offers such as free 8 GB of high-speed data, free unlimited talk and text, and an option to buy a tablet for $10.01.

The ACP is administered by the Universal Service Administrative Co. under the FCC’s oversight. USAC’s website does not appear to have information on how many ACP enrollees have transferred to a new internet provider during the 24-month life of the ACP, which was created to help struggling Americans rebound from the pandemic.

Ted Hearn is the Editor of Policyband, a new website dedicated to comprehensive coverage of the broadband communications market. This piece was published on Policyband on January 12, 2024, and is reprinted with permission.

Broadband's Impact

FCC Issues Timeline for ACP Wind Down

The FCC order came a day after bipartisan legislation was introduced to extend ACP.

Published

4 days ago

January 12, 2024

Jericho Casper

Photo of hourglass via iStock.

WASHINGTON, January 12, 2024 – The Federal Communications Commission announced on Thursday that starting February 8 it will no longer accept new enrollments for the Affordable Connectivity Program, barring Congressional approval of additional funding for the low-income program.

The commission issued a 15-page order detailing its timeline and requirements to gradually phase out the program. The first in a series of deadlines is set for January 25, when providers must notify participants of the program’s anticipated end for the first time.

The FCC’s order came the day after bipartisan legislation was introduced in both the Senate and the House, proposing an additional $7 billion for the ACP program.

If passed, this funding would enable the FCC to extend the ACP until the year’s end, potentially negating some of the wind-down steps detailed in the recent FCC order.

Introduced in January 2022 to replace the Emergency Connectivity Fund that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic, the ACP offers monthly stipends of $30-75 for internet service to qualifying U.S. households.

In the recent order, the commission notes that with the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Congress enacted several changes to the ECF Program to transform it from an emergency COVID-19 program to a longer-term broadband affordability program.

The FCC continues to change the program to address participant needs. Most recently, the commission raised the monthly ACP benefit to $75 for high-cost rural areas and directed the Universal Service Administrative Company to accept applications from interested providers.

Yet, due to concerns about potential confusion, the commission canceled the plans for USAC to process applications in a recent order.

Absent Congressional intervention, the FCC’s Bureau will announce the last fully funded month of the program in late February, currently projected to be April 2024.

Fifteen days after that announcement, providers will be required to send a second notice to ACP participants about the program’s end. The third notice issued will coincide with the last billing cycle that the full ACP benefit is applied to.

Providers must secure a household’s explicit agreement to continue to receive broadband services after the end of the ACP.

In the order, the commission said it will begin to inform organizations that received outreach grants to cease outreach work focused on enrollment.

On Friday, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, alongside four community partner organizations representing the 240 outreach coordinators for the ACP, filed a letter to the FCC asking that ACP outreach grantees be able to redirect their funded work toward program wind-down activities, including “raising awareness about the potential end of the ACP.”

12 Days of Broadband

12 Days: FCC Issued Rules Against Digital Discrimination

In religious traditions including Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism and others, 8 represents the idea of balance, justice and fairness.

Published

3 weeks ago

December 29, 2023

Jericho Casper

Illustration by DALL-E

WASHINGTON, December 29, 2023 – In a vote split 3-2 along party lines, the Federal Communications Commission moved to adopt rules aimed at preventing discrimination in access to broadband services, on November 15.

Under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the agency was tasked by Congress to enact regulations in 2023 aimed at eliminating digital discrimination and preventing its recurrence. The law amended the Communications Act to include the standard that “subscribers should benefit from equal access to broadband internet access service within the service area of a provider of such service.” (47 U.S.C. 1754)

On the Eighth Day of Broadband, my true love sent to me:
The Number 8 As a Representation of Balance, Justice and Fairness
7 Layers to the Open Systems Interconnection Model and Open Access Networks
One-hundred-and 66 Billion Dollars of American Semiconductor Investment
56 States and Territorial Broadband Offices Implementing BEAD
4.8 Million Challenges to Broadband Coverage Data
$3.6 Billion Funds Remaining in the Affordable Connectivity Program
24 Reverse-Preemption Pole Attachment States (2023 edition)
And One Artificial General Intelligence

The FCC’s new rules ban service providers from broadband discrimination by implementing a “disparate impact” standard. This standard aims to hold internet service providers accountable for practices that result in unequal broadband access among marginalized groups, irrespective of the providers’ intentions.

The shift departs from the former “disparate treatment” norm, which long upheld that either the government or third-party plaintiffs had to present proof of deliberate discrimination by a business to establish liability.

The new regulations implement a rule that digital discrimination can occur even if there is no discriminatory intent, based on criteria like income or race, is involved.

How will the agency conduct enforcement?

The commission will now have enforcement powers available, and investigations may be initiated through a complaint process.

Broadband providers criticized the agency and threated to sue because of the potential broad application of the new standard, fearing it might penalize routine business practices. Their efforts aimed to narrow the definition of digital discrimination to actions specifically designed to disenfranchise particular communities.

Before the agency’s action in mid-December, 24 organizations penned a letter to Congress urging its members to oppose the FCC’s rulemaking in mid-December.

Differing views on the rule’s effect

Experts held differing views regarding the probable effects of the FCC’s rules at a November Broadband Breakfast Live Online event.

At the event Harold Feld, senior vice president at public interest group Public Knowledge, maintained that the rules’ impact would be minimal for the initial 60 days after implementation, and then, most likely remedy only the “worst and most visible disparities” in broadband access.

Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution Director Nicol Turner-Lee cautioned that demonstrating instances of discrimination poses a significant challenge, as evidenced in other sectors such as housing, healthcare, and employment.

Others in the industry have raised concern that the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program may not effectively address the issues faced by marginalized groups. In a recent Expert Opinion piece, Emma Gautier from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance contended that urban areas, significantly impacted by digital redlining, might face greater obstacles in obtaining BEAD funding. This challenge stems from the infrastructure law’s predominant emphasis on rural development.

The situation is further complicated by flawed FCC maps, she said which exaggerate coverage, speeds, and competition, making it notably difficult or perhaps impossible for most urban zones tagged as “served” to access BEAD funds.

See “The Twelve Days of Broadband” on Broadband Breakfast