spinningroundthebeltway

The Federal Communications Commission recently held a hearing to look at the current state of broadband policy. You can find the webcast here.

Among the things I found most interesting was Rahul Tongia’s presentation on the disparity of broadband access across the US and what this means for both those who are and who are not connected.

Tongia, who is a senior systems scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, offers a sort of exclusion loop according to which those who are denied broadband access encounter adverse consequences, which further impact the rest of society (read: the included groups):  

Those who are excluded from the “included” network will often resort to alternative or parallel networks. These can be less efficient, more expensive, less environmentally green, etc. If I cannot, say, download a government form of the Web, I might have to write, call, go there in person etc. Going may involve long lines, taking a bus, driving etc. This has implications on time, energy, environment, etc.

What this means is that policymakers must take account of the way that everyone is affected by the digital divide in order to devise a smart and credible national broadband strategy. Merely concentrating on what appears to be “society’s overall improvement” is insufficient to meeting the challenge because it does nothing to help the excluded groups gain access nor does it ease the pressure exerted on the included groups, which paradoxically bear the indirect consequences of exclusion.

Besides offering a novel “exclusion-based framework” to examining the scope  of the digital divide, Tongia also makes the point that this measurement involves examining many factors on top of connectivity itself, such as speed and location. Whether someone has broadband or not is surely a prerequisite, but the analysis doesn’t end there. So sites like speedmatters.org, where you can actually measure your local community’s average Internet speed, really are true to their name (but don’t assume that speed is the only factor in measuring the digital divide, either).

When it comes the nuts and bolts - literally - of making broadband policy, senior advisor Eric Werner of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration declared at this year’s Politics Online conference that the experts “are really all in agreement about where it is we want to go” and that “to the extent that we differ, it is with respect to how we get to where we want to be.” He followed that up by calling for a “informed, objective dialogue” to help the political and technology communities navigate the challenge of broadband.

To me it is studies like Tongia’s that power that sort of dialogue by exploring all of the angles of broadband, not just the ones that traditionally get the most coverage.

All in all, it was a really wonky presentation that is definitely worth checking out.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS