Calling a strong, affordable internet connection for every American a “must-have,” Sen. Patty Murray, was joined by Microsoft’s Brad Smith and other digital wangle advocates to push for spare federal spending to modernize broadband wangle and affordability wideness the country.
“It’s time to invest in broadband in a big way,” Murray said in the online conversation well-nigh her legislation, the $1.4 billion Digital Equity Act. Smith, president of the Seattle-area tech giant, well-set and tabbed internet wangle a vital need for everyone.
“Broadband had wilt the electricity of the 21st Century,” Smith said.
Murray, who is co-sponsoring the legislation with Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman, seeks to put hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grant money into local projects by targeting three wholesale categories: connecting people to high-speed internet; helping them get internet devices vastitude mobile phones; and teaching the necessary skills to navigate an online world.
The pandemic, the panel said, didn’t reveal what is known as the digital divide; all said they have known well-nigh this problem for years. Instead, they said, the months of working-and-learning from home made it untellable to ignore the problem any longer.
“When the pandemic forced schools to tropical in March of 2020 it was quickly unveiled to me and my colleagues that children would not be worldly-wise to shepherd school without a working device and unobjectionable home broadband,” said Susan Enfield, superintendent of Highline Public Schools.
She added: “I want to be clear: We’ve known well-nigh the digital divide for years. And we chose to squint yonder considering we could.”
Murray, Smith and Enfield, were joined by King County Library System Executive Director Lisa Rosenblum, Equity in Education Coalition co-founder and Executive Director Sharonne Navas and City of Seattle Digital Equity Program Manager David Keyes.
Navas noted that when the Equity in Education Coalition did detailed research during the pandemic they discovered increasingly than 18,000 King County households lacked internet wangle and increasingly than 285,000 students statewide lacked internet access.
In part, that information is what crush Kitsap County Rep. Drew Hansen to successfully push for legislation to indulge municipal governments to wilt internet service providers and expand the reach of broadband.
Taking effect in three weeks, Hansen’s HB1336 grants legal validity to public utility districts, counties, towns, and port districts to offer retail broadband service to subscribers in the same manner that a private visitor such as Comcast does. The snout gives municipalities legal validity to wilt internet service providers.
But Navas said much increasingly needs to be done. The pandemic showed that the internet has wilt a requirement withal the lines of food, housing, education, and medical care. “(The internet) was the one thing technically that was holding this state together,” she said.