No Longer a Luxury: Momentum Towards Closing the Digital Divide

Corrected at 3:30 p.m. on June 22, 2023: This report has been changed to cite The Pew Charitable Trusts rather than Pew Research Center as a source for how many households have enrolled in the ACP since its establishment in 2021.

High speed internet access is an increasingly essential tool for accessing healthcare, work, and education; however, many are left without access to high speed internet due to a lack of infrastructure, high costs, and lack of computer literacy. Approximately 1 in 5 American households are not connected to the internet, many of these having concerns about cost and affordability. In The Cost of Connectivity 2020 report, New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI) found that consumers in the United States pay more on average for internet services compared to users in Europe, Asia, and North America.

Looking closer to home, in Chicago the impact of the digital divide on education, work, and accessing support services was felt hardest during the pandemic and a common issue across communities. In 2021 interviews with local nonprofit leaders and focus groups with residents of Black and Latino/a communities, we heard about how big of a challenge the digital divide was for residents seeking new jobs and assistance during the pandemic, while children attended school remotely via computer. Lack of access to the internet, poor/slow connection, a lack of devices, and lack of computer literacy were issues in many lower income neighborhoods.

Without access to broadband, individuals in households are unable to seek and apply for jobs; connect with a wider social network; use educational materials such as photos, music, or online interactive lessons; and they are unable to access remote health care services. Some action has been taken at the federal level to address these inequities in access, but it’s not yet clear how much this has increased access in various areas of the country, including Chicago.

In a bipartisan measure in November of 2021, President Biden signed into law the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which provides approximately $550 billion in federal funding to improve areas such as public transit, clean water, roads and bridges, and creating affordable high speed internet. Specifically, this bill allocated $65 billion to expand broadband across the United States, create lower cost broadband options, provide funding to address the digital divide, and subsidize the cost of service for low-income households.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provided $14.2 billion to modify and expand the existing Emergency Broadband Benefit Program (EBB) creating a longer term version of the program called the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the ACP is a program that supports low-income households that struggle to afford monthly internet service, providing them access to the broadband they need for work, school, healthcare, and more. The ACP provides a discount of up to $30 per month for eligible households and a discount of up to $75 per month for eligible households on tribal lands. It also provides a one-time discount of up to $100 toward the purchase of a tablet, laptop, or desktop computer from participating partners after contributing $10 to $50. The ACP currently serves about 16 million households and more than 1,300 internet service providers participate in the program.

So who is eligible?

A household is eligible if a member of the household meets at least one of the criteria below:

• Has an income that is at or below 200% of the federal poverty guidelines;
• Participates in certain assistance programs, such as SNAP, Medicaid, Federal Public Housing Assistance, SSI, WIC, or Lifeline;
• Participates in Tribal specific programs, such as Bureau of Indian Affairs General Assistance, Tribal TANF, or Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations;
• Is approved to receive benefits under the free and reduced-price school lunch program or the school breakfast program in the current or immediately preceding school year;
• Received a Federal Pell Grant during the current award year; or
• Meets the eligibility criteria for a participating provider's existing low-income program.

However, according to The Pew Charitable Trusts, only 1 in 4 eligible households have enrolled in the ACP since its establishment in 2021. This is partially due to the sometimes lengthy multistep enrollment process that is the responsibility of the participant. If everything goes right, the enrollment process can take 30 to 45 minutes but sometimes can take much longer. Oftentimes approval is not immediate, and many, around 45 percent, of applicants are rejected due to issues with documentation or logistical issues such as names or addresses not matching with the database. This causes the process to be much longer for households that are eligible and attempt the process again.

In order to ease enrollment pressures, several potential solutions have been developed. Some include more outreach and increasing awareness for the program, like the currently ongoing ACP Week of Action. Other solutions on the implementation side include making the application process much simpler by allowing alternate forms of identification or working with applicants to make sure they have the correct documents as well as expanding eligibility criteria so more households are able to enroll in the program. User experience (UX) research could provide key insights as to where many of these pain points lie for applicants and why they drop out.

Anecdotes from community members also suggest that once households do sign up, the quality and speed of the internet are inferior to that received by other customers. Cities like Chicago can consider recruiting local households to conduct speed tests on Measurement Lab’s website or using cellphone based speed tests to determine the quality of broadband in different neighborhoods. This could be incredibly helpful in learning more about whether the broadband service provided under the ACP is sufficient for key household needs related to job search, health care, schooling, and benefits access.

The ACP, provided by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, is a step in the right direction in the efforts to close the digital divide. The ACP provides some financial relief to low-income households who find the cost of broadband to be too much despite it being a 21st century necessity. However, enrollment hurdles and potentially internet speed remain a significant problem for families who need affordable internet access and are eligible for it. There are still approximately 19 million households who lack access to broadband, missing out on work and education opportunities. This issue spans both urban and rural areas, making broadband access one of the country's most inequitable infrastructure sources.