“Internet is a basic building block:” Advocates push for affordable and accessible broadband amid growing digital divide Writing, reporting and photos by Abbey Marshall
D
enise McCormick and her three children spend weekdays working and studying from library computers. It’s not that they don’t have internet access in their North Hill home; it just doesn’t work very well. Between her three teenagers completing virtual school work and being a single working mother studying for a degree online, the family is all too familiar with waiting for screens to load and getting booted from classroom Zoom calls. Upgrading their internet plan would be expensive: McCormick already pays $100 a month. “The digital divide is definitely real,” McCormick says. “With everything being forced digitally, every city in this country should be organizing better [broadband] infrastructure because COVID is a perfect example of how things can be restricted for people who can’t afford it.” The pandemic has only exacerbated the digital divide. The widening cracks in equity have prompted the city and county to address accessibility concerns for residents. A potential path local officials are exploring is a major broadband infrastructure investment that would provide internet as a public utility, which would require at least a $70
14 | The Devil Strip
million investment and years of construction. Advocates were hopeful to use a portion of the $153 million grant the city received as part of the federal American Rescue Act, but broadband was not included on Mayor Dan Horrigan’s list of priorities, so questions of affordability still remain. A look at broadband access in Akron Akron is one of seven Ohio cities labeled as “distressed” when it comes to broadband access. Nearly 16% of households in the city do not have access to any broadband, including a phone data plan, according to a 2019 report from the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. More than 31% of residents do not have access to broadband with cable, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) or fiber optic, which allow for high-speed access that enables users to send and receive data quickly, stream video with little to no buffering and more. The report looked at households that were tapped into and using the internet, not just whether it was available. Unlike in many distressed Ohio counties, primarily located in rural Southeast, it’s not necessarily an access issue; it’s an affordability issue. Ohio has the 13th highest overall cost for utilities — including electric, gas, water, cable and internet — of any other state, according to data
compiled in 2018 by move.org, a site that collects information and data related to moving, such as expenses. Who is excluded from internet access? In addition to many residents now working from home, Akron Public School students spent nearly an entire school year instructing students virtually. While the district provided and paid for more than 1,400 hotspots and 50 Spectrum accounts for students in need of internet access, that is not a long-tterm solution for keeping students digitally connected. On April 1, Akron City Council and the Akron Public Schools Board of Education, met to address the internet accessibility crisis facing students. “We realized more than ever how important technology really is and how maybe not prepared we really were for this pandemic that hit,” Margo Sommerville, city council president, said at the April 1 meeting. “Children were doing remote learning in their home. The absence of WiFi and technology posed a lot of issues.” Though many students returned to classrooms in March, questions have been raised about how lack of internet access at home affects students’ ability to complete their homework.
May 2021 · Vol 9 · Issue #5
“If kids need to do homework in the evenings and they’re leaning on the internet only at the library, it sets them up for failure,” McCormick, the North Hill mother of three, says. “That’s just the bottom line.” The problem goes beyond inequity in education, as digital access is necessary in many professions and facets of life. When 29-year-old Ajante Buchanan became homeless, he turned to the public library for internet access. With a two-hour limitation, he maxes out his time each day searching for jobs and housing options. “It can go fast, especially when I’m trying to look for a job or if I have to deal with a time-sensitive matter,” he says. The difficulty of not having a phone or regular internet connection goes beyond reliance on public facilities. Everything is reliant on the internet, he says, from banking to telehealth visits, which have made “times especially troubling” during the pandemic, when a lot of in-person locations have closed and shifted services online. “It’s just becoming more and more important to have, and it’s almost a necessity,” Buchanan says. “It’s hard to function in society without it. Everything is communicated online.”
thedevilstrip.com
