Coronavirus highlights digital divide in rural, urban areas

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the rural-urban digital divide, as rural workers and students across the nation struggle to work and learn from home with only patchy broadband access; many must rely on wireless as their only source of internet.

"The Pew Research Center reported that in 2019, about 73 percent of American adults had a home broadband connection," Ivan Pereira reports for ABC News. "However, about 63% of rural Americans have broadband internet access, which is 12 percentage points below urban Americans and 16 percentage points below suburban Americans, according to a survey released last year by Pew." The Pew data is based on surveys; the official numbers have been criticized for overstating how many rural Americans have access to rural broadband.

Tim Marema, editor of The Daily Yonder, told ABC that the problem results from years of failure to invest in rural broadband infrastructure construction, and the gap can't be quickly closed in response to the pandemic. Pereira reports, "While the Federal Communications Commission and internet providers have put in temporary fixes, such as removing data caps, increasing cellphone tower range and free access to low-income users, Marema and other activists say those solutions won’t go far enough in the next few weeks."

Moreover, some internet-provider solutions are difficult for some to access. Comcast, which has a larger rural reach than most internet providers, announced recently that it would offer two months of free service for its lowest-tier internet plan, but "Enrollment in Internet Essentials remains relatively low, in part because its eligibility requirements disqualify many poor applicants. For example, anyone who has been a Comcast customer in the previous 90 days, or who has unpaid bills with the telecom company, is ineligible," Nicole Aschoff writes for the left-leaning publication Jacobin.

In many rural areas, the lack of broadband means the "homework gap" is widening among rural K-12 students, and becoming a new problem for college students returning home to rural areas to finish out the semester, Shane Fowler writes for the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky. Fowler is a student at Harvard Law School who is back home in Cynthiana, but is frustrated that it's difficult to access class lectures delivered via teleconferencing software.