Lifeline offline: Unreliable internet, cell service are hurting rural Pennsylvania’s health; The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 26, 2018

Kris B. Mamula and Jessie Wardarski, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette;

Lifeline offline: Unreliable internet, cell service are hurting rural Pennsylvania’s health

 

"Even as businesses in Pittsburgh compete to commercialize artificial intelligence and give machines the human quality of “learning,” just a three-hour drive away people struggle with dial-up connections — if there are internet connections at all.

More than 24 million Americans — 800,000 in Pennsylvania and mostly in rural areas — lack an internet connection that meets a federal minimum standard for speed. The result is a yawning divide in commerce, education and medicine that’s splitting America into the digital haves and have-nots.

“We’re basically being cut off from the 21st century,” Huntingdon County Planning Director Mark Colussy said."

FCC WON'T REDEFINE 'BROADBAND;' MOVE COULD HAVE WORSENED DIGITAL DIVIDE; Wired, January 18, 2018

Klint Finley, Wired; 

FCC WON'T REDEFINE 'BROADBAND;' MOVE COULD HAVE WORSENED DIGITAL DIVIDE

"The FCC announced Thursday that it will continue to define home broadband as connections that are 25 megabits per second (mbps). The commission also established a new standard for mobile broadband as a connection of 10mbps or higher, and said it had rejected the idea—which it had floated last year—of labeling mobile internet service an adequate replacement for home broadband.

Consumer groups and advocates for rural communities had worried that changing the definition of broadband would enable the government to minimize the so-called digital divide, between communities with speedy internet access and those without."

Best state: Delaware, where Internet is in the fast lane; Delaware Online, 3/7/15

Reid Wilson, Delaware Online; Best state: Delaware, where Internet is in the fast lane:

"Delaware, Washington and Connecticut have Internet connections that average more than 15 Mbps, Akamai’s threshold for what it calls “4K Readiness,” meaning they’re fast enough to stream ultra-high-definition video. Globally, just 12 percent of Internet connections met the 4K Readiness standard; in Delaware, 39 percent of connections did.

Delaware has invested heavily in improving broadband connections. The legislature passed a measure in 2013 to bulk up broadband service to schools, libraries and rural areas that were otherwise underserved by cable companies. New fiber-optic infrastructure runs the length of the state, from Wilmington to Georgetown, funded in part by the state’s economic development office...

By contrast, Alaska, Arkansas and Kentucky – three largely rural states where building Internet infrastructure is costly – are at the bottom of the rankings."

F.C.C. Says It Will Double Spending on High-Speed Internet in Schools and Libraries; New York Times, 2/1/14

Edward Wyatt, New York Times; F.C.C. Says It Will Double Spending on High-Speed Internet in Schools and Libraries:

"The Federal Communications Commission will double the amount of money it devotes to adding high-speed Internet connections in schools and libraries over the next two years, in an effort to meet President Obama’s promise to provide broadband service for an estimated 20 million American students in 15,000 schools, officials said Saturday.

Financing for the new spending will come from restructuring the $2.4 billion E-Rate program, which provides money for “advanced telecommunications and information services” using the proceeds of fees paid by telecommunications users. The proportion that goes to broadband service in schools and libraries will increase to $2 billion a year from $1 billion...

A 2010 survey conducted for the F.C.C. by Harris Interactive found that roughly half of schools receiving E-Rate funds connected to the Internet at speeds of three megabits per second or less — too slow to stream many video services. The commission wants to give all schools access to broadband connections of 100 megabits per second by 2015, and connections of up to one gigabit per second by the end of the decade. Another survey, by the American Library Association, found that 60 percent of libraries reported their speeds failed to meet their patrons’ needs some or most of the time."

Obama faces digital divide growing wider on heels of FCC court ruling; FoxNews.com, 1/27/14

Barnini Chakraborty, FoxNews.com; Obama faces digital divide growing wider on heels of FCC court ruling:

"The great digital divide that President Obama repeatedly has pledged to fix could grow even wider, after a recent federal court ruling put the president's promise of leveling the tech playing field in jeopardy...

Last year, the president pitched a plan aimed at making sure "99 percent of students across the country" would receive access to high-speed broadband and wireless Internet at their schools within the next five years. During his 2011 State of the Union address, he stressed the need to upgrade all Americans.

"This isn't just about faster Internet or fewer dropped calls," Obama said at the time. "It's about connecting every part of America to the digital age."

But on Jan. 14, a federal appeals court struck down the Federal Communications Commission's Open Internet Order pertaining to so-called "net neutrality." The decision paves the way for Internet service providers to potentially block any website or app of their choosing...

Barbara Stripling, president of the American Library Association, argues that by allowing ISPs to preferentially charge for a tiered access, not only will public libraries suffer, but so will the communities that rely on them. She believe the hardest hit would be school children in grades K-12.

"Schools, public and college universities rely upon public availability of government services, licensed databases, job-training videos, medical and scientific research, and many other essential services," she wrote in a Jan. 16 opinion piece on Wired.com."

Mixed Response to Comcast in Expanding Net Access; New York Times, 1/20/13

Amy Chozick, New York Times; Mixed Response to Comcast in Expanding Net Access: "Internet Essentials is not a government program, although that would be difficult to tell from the poster. Instead, it is a two-year-old program run by Comcast, the country’s largest Internet and cable provider, meant to bring affordable broadband to low-income homes. Any family that qualifies for the National School Lunch Program is eligible for Internet service at home for $9.95 a month. The families also receive a voucher from Comcast to buy a computer for as little as $150. The program is not charity: Comcast started Internet Essentials in order to satisfy a regulatory requirement to provide Internet access to the poor, which also happens to be one of the few remaining areas for growth for cable companies across the country. More than 100,000 households in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco and other major markets have signed up for Internet Essentials. But as the program gains popularity, the company has come under criticism, accused of overreaching in its interactions with local communities — handing out brochures with the company logo during parent-teacher nights at public schools, for instance, or enlisting teachers and pastors to spread the word to students and congregations."

On Tribal Lands, Digital Divide Brings New Form Of Isolation; HuffingtonPost.com, 4/20/12

HuffingtonPost.com; On Tribal Lands, Digital Divide Brings New Form Of Isolation: "Native Americans have long experienced disconnection from the rest of the country -- their reservations are generally placed on remote lands with little economic potential, separated from modern-day markets for goods, as well as higher education and health care. The dawn of the Internet was supposed to bridge this gap, according to the promises of prominent public officials. Fiber optics cables along with satellite and wireless links would deliver the benefits of modernity to reservations, helping lift Native American communities out of isolation and poverty. But the rise of the web as an essential platform in American life has instead reinforced the distance for the simple reason that most Native Americans have little access to the online world. Less than 10 percent of homes on tribal lands have broadband Internet service -- a rate that is lower than in some developing countries. By contrast, more than half of African Americans and Hispanics and about three-fourths of whites have high-speed access at home, according to the Department of Commerce."

[OpEd] The New Digital Divide; New York Times, 12/3/11

[OpEd] Susan P. Crawford, New York Times; The New Digital Divide:

"Increasingly, we are a country in which only the urban and suburban well-off have truly high-speed Internet access, while the rest — the poor and the working class — either cannot afford access or use restricted wireless access as their only connection to the Internet. As our jobs, entertainment, politics and even health care move online, millions are at risk of being left behind."

Digital Age Is Slow to Arrive in Rural America; New York Times, 2/18/11

Kim Severson, New York Times; Digital Age Is Slow to Arrive in Rural America:

"As the world embraces its digital age — two billion people now use the Internet regularly — the line delineating two Americas has become more broadly drawn. There are those who have reliable, fast access to the Internet, and those, like about half of the 27,867 people here in Clarke County, who do not."