Fri, Oct 30th 2020 12:00pm
Terique Boyce
Broadband is in a state of disarray in America. This was the case long before COVID-19 brought the world to its knees earlier this year. Roughly a third of Americans have no access to broadband internet, with the majority stating cost as the most important obstacle. Even in highly connected urban areas, such as New York City, a lack of connectivity impacts millions of residents. According to Mayor de Blasio’s Internet Master Plan, 40% of New Yorkers lack access to home or mobile broadband, including roughly 20% who lack access to both.
Many of these internet black out zones are in low income and minority communities. As the coronavirus pandemic set in, internet accessibility became more crucial than ever. However, as schools transitioned to online learning, many children were unable to participate – and continue to face the same challenge today, months later. Our community at NYC Mesh is fighting to bring digital equity to all communi
Fri, Jan 8th 2021 12:00pm
Karl Bode
Over the last few months a wide variety of activists, experts, engineers, and academics provided their insights into broadband access (or a lack thereof) in the COVID era. We d like to thank all of the participants for their insights during a difficult and complicated time, and hope readers gleaned something useful from the exercise. You can peruse all of the contributions here if you missed any of them during the busy holiday season.
Our first two Techdirt Greenhouse panels, focusing on content moderation and privacy, saw no shortage of elaborate solutions for extremely complicated subjects. While broadband access can certainly be complicated (especially when it comes to policy, legislation, and network management), in many ways it s the simplest subject we ve tackled so far.