Homework Gap a Reason Poor Need Residential Broadband, New Orleans Official Says
The so-called homework gap is a reason the poor need residential broadband, not just mobile service, said Jennifer Terry, program manager of New Orleans internet access and digital equity. She hopes NATOA pushes for ways for towns to extend broadband…
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infrastructure and perhaps service to low-income areas that private ISPs don't serve widely. Seattle Digital Equity Manager David Keyes seconded that. "What’s really helping people to access the internet right now is quite frankly mobile technology," Terry said. "There are certain tasks that are hard to perform on a mobile phone," like editing a resume or job application -- which she tried to do and found takes much longer than on a device like a computer -- and completing homework, she said. "The homework gap is a problem. You’ve got these children sitting in the lobby or parking lot" of a McDonald's or a Starbucks, the official said. "We have to think about our students trying to complete multiple assignments. ... There are so many tasks that are difficult to complete on a mobile phone." So "getting people access in their homes is really the holy grail" of broadband, Terry said. A "very long-term strategy" is her city building a fiber institutional network to government buildings, she added: "It will obviously take years." It's "hard to entice the telecoms to offer service in low-income areas of" New Orleans and elsewhere, Terry said. All the most affluent neighborhoods there have net access, which drops to a percentage in the 30s for low-income areas, she said: "This is creating a huge disparity." NCTA, USTelecom and Louisiana's LCTA cable telecom association didn't comment. Paying $40 monthly for home broadband may be too much for some, said Seattle's Keyes on the NATOA panel. "We still have to find ways to push and partner with the companies around that, offset the costs where we can." He gives "a lot of credit to the companies" like Comcast: It sees the Internet Essentials it began for those of limited financial means when the company was seeking to buy NBCUniversal "as a public value" and so kept and expanded the program even after the FCC's IE NBCU condition ended. The Comcast/NBCU IE condition expired in 2014, company spokespeople noted. It has made 40-plus "enhancements and changes," including raising downstream speeds from 1.5 to 15 Mbps, and "numerous eligibility expansions," emailed a spokesperson. Uploads have been 2 Mbps since they were raised in 2017, he noted.