Lawmakers recognized this during the pandemic and set in motion once-in-a-generation opportunities to build the future-proof fiber infrastructure needed to close the digital divide once and for all.
Monopolistic internet service providers, with business models that created the digital divide in the first place, are doing everything they can to maintain control over the broadband market-including stopping the construction of any infrastructure they do not control.
This year, New York City Mayor Eric Adams turned his back on the future of broadband accessibility for New Yorkers.
In 2020, then Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled New York City's Internet Master Plan to deliver broadband to low-income New Yorkers by investing in public fiber infrastructure.
Public fiber infrastructure would have been an investment in New York City's future, a long-term solution to permanently bridge the digital divide and bring affordable, accessible future-proof service to New Yorkers for generations to come.
This kind of public infrastructure, especially if provisioned on an open and affordable basis dramatically lowers barriers to entry, which in turn creates competition, lower prices, and better customer service in the market as a whole.
Instead of building physical infrastructure to bridge the digital divide for decades to come, New York City will now subsidize NYC's oligopolist ISPs, Charter Spectrum and Altice, to continue doing business as usual.
All it does is put taxpayer dollars into corporate pockets instead of into infrastructure that actually serves the people.
The Adams administration even asked a cooperatively-run community based ISP that had been a part of the Internet Master Plan and had already installed fiber infrastructure to dismantle their network so the city can further contract with the big ISPs.
New York City is not the only place public commitment to bridging the digital divide has wavered.
In 2021, California invested nearly $7 billion to bring affordable fiber infrastructure to all Californians.
As part of this process California's Department of Technology was meant to build 10,000 miles of middle-mile fiber infrastructure, the physical foundation through which community-level last mile connections would be built to serve underserved communities for decades to come.
In August the Department of Technology not only reduced the number of miles to be built but also cut off entire communities that had traditionally been underserved.
Despite fierce community pushback, the Department of Technology stuck to their revised plans and awarded contracts accordingly.
Governor Newsom has promised to restore the lost miles in 2024, which EFF and California community groups intend to hold him to, but the fact remains that the reduction of miles should not have been done the way they were.
On digital discrimination, EFF applauds the Commission for adopting a disparate treatment as well as disparate impact standard.
Companies can now be found liable for digital discrimination not only when they intentionally treat communities differently, but when the impact of their decisions-regardless of intent-affect a community differently.
Further, for the first time the Commission recognized the link between historic redlining in housing and digital discrimination, making the connection between the historic underinvestment of lower income communities of color and the continued underinvestment by the monopolistic ISPs.
The questions will be who gets funding, whether and where infrastructure gets built, and whether long-neglected communities will finally be heard and brought into the 21st-century or left behind by public neglect or private greed.
The path to affordable, accessible, future-proof internet for all will require the political will to invest in physical infrastructure and hold incumbents to nondiscrimination rules that preserve speech and competition online.
This Cyber News was published on www.eff.org. Publication date: Fri, 29 Dec 2023 20:13:04 +0000