technology and COVID-19
Increasing Access:
5G AND BROADBAND By Vanessa Grossl
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round the country, states have been working in creative ways to ensure that residents have access to broadband by instituting task forces and other offices and implementing alternative funding mechanisms. Broadband has become increasingly essential in the daily lives of rural, urban and inner-city residents alike, and increasing broadband access is an important step in bridging the digital divide. Connectivity speeds are likewise important to communities and governments. In fact, the COVID-19 pandemic is showing just how key broadband access is in helping residents navigate and thrive in the new normal. Access allows residents to connect with telehealth, distance learning opportunities for K-12 students and beyond, government services and so much more.
ISSUE 2 2020 | CAPITOL IDEAS
Estimates from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) say that 21 million Americans lack broadband access. Other estimates place that number as high as 162 million Americans. This is a critical issue and is an area where states are playing an active role to help with more accurate broadband mapping.
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States are establishing broadband funds and grant programs and engaging in a variety of other programmatic activities such as planning, outreach to stakeholders and even digital literacy efforts. States are investing in helping to close the broadband deployment gap by focusing on bringing service to unserved and underserved communities. Minnesota established a broadband task force in 2011 and has had very aggressive goals for broadband expansion, including border-to-border access at speeds of 25/3 megabits per second by 2022 and 100/20 Mbps by 2026. The state set up a broadband office within the Department of Employment and Economic Development in 2013 followed by a grant
program in 2014. Since 2014, that grant program has invested $85 million and connected over 40,000 premises, according to Anna Read, a broadband research initiative officer from Pew Charitable Trusts, who served on a panel at a CSG Future of Work National Task Force meeting in December 2019. The private sector is also getting involved with ambitious goals to connect America. According to Sid Roberts of Microsoft’s Airband Initiative, Microsoft is currently on target to expand broadband (through internet service provider partnerships) into rural areas of states. Between July 2017 and July 2022, the project will reach 3 million residents who had never before had access to broadband, primarily using fixed wireless technology (antenna) and television white space technology. Halfway through its five-year rural broadband project, Microsoft’s Airband Initiative is now in 25 states and Puerto Rico. Another promising private sector initiative is the New T-Mobile which completed its merger with Sprint in April 2020 and has goals to dramatically increase 5G access, even in rural areas and small towns, which could allow some of them to leapfrog above and beyond both current levels in terms of both access to broadband and speed. The New T-Mobile is expected to provide 5G to 99% of the U.S. population with average 5G speeds above 100 Mbps to 90% of the population. Their business plan is built on covering 90% of rural residents with average 5G speeds of 50 Mbps, up to two times faster than broadband within 6 years. 5G offers more bandwidth, faster mobile services and more real-time services over mobile. According to Brent Skorup of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, who also served as a panelist for the CSG Future of Work National Task Force, the FCC has made a lot more spectrum
