Like electricity in the 20th century, broadband access is now an economic necessity

On New Year’s Eve 1927, Thomas Edison turned on the lights of Philadelphia’s newest skyscraper.

Edison was an aged celebrity by then, the father of industrialized research and development, which included commercializing electric light. Harnessing electricity was still novel technology — only about half of American households had it. Philadelphians alive then could have remembered the first time Chestnut Street was lit in the 1880s.

Edison flipping the switch was something like Steve Jobs commemorating the launch of a new iPhone app 15 years ago. 

Today’s defining technology is the internet, along with the interlocking digital tools that contributed to and resulted from its inception. Artificial intelligence may well usher in its own technology epoch, but even this branch of computer science is as beholden to the internet — as the internet is to electricity.

How and whether high-speed internet access is like the electrification of homes can teach us something. 

Getting online and knowing what to do once you’re there matters. The New Deal-era Rural Electrification Administration added programs in the 1930s to familiarize Americans with how to harness electricity. That’s why so many policymakers, researchers and civic organizations today, including Technical.ly, care so much about who has access to the internet and how. People who learn about emerging technologies today tend to be the entrepreneurs and tech workers of tomorrow.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia hosted a series of discussions this month on broadband infrastructure and its economic impact. Attendees traveled from Washington DC, Baltimore and New York, joining locals to dissect the Philadelphia case study: A poor big city that has steadily grown internet access amid experiments to do so faster and to boost economic gains in the hometown of one of the country’s largest internet service providers.

The Fed meeting wasn’t open to the public, but the discussion was rich. I was teased by one of the meeting’s 50 stakeholders for overusing the “essential utility” metaphor, but what can we learn by comparing access to electricity and access to high-speed internet? 

The ‘digital divide’ is about infrastructure, cost and literacy

Much of Technical.ly’s best, earliest reporting more than 15 years ago was about internet connectivity and skills. My cofounder and I covered exhaustively a bold, if ultimately unsuccessful, $100 million “Digital Philadelphia” vision from city leadership to both upgrade municipal IT infrastructure and launch a new attempt at government-subsidized internet. We returned often to Wireless Philadelphia, a landmark effort in the 2000s to launch a municipal wifi program that never came to be.

In part, those programs sought to close what was commonly known then as the “digital divide,” a term coined in the mid-1990s to describe how unequal access to and comfort with accelerating technology could widen economic gains. 

In 2011, methodology was still developing, but upwards of 40% of Philadelphia households were without broadband. That same year, Comcast launched Internet Essentials, a low-cost offering that was required for regulatory approval of its NBCUniversal acquisition. (At the Fed event, National Skills Coalition fellow Amanda Bergson-Shilcock reminded of the old quip: “Poor folks get programs, rich folks get policies.”)

This set off a wave of debate about what internet speed was fast enough, and what goals were worth prioritizing. Put simply, there are three big stages of internet access:

• Infrastructure: Cables, wires and satellites that give a household or business access to an internet service provider.
• Affordability: Costs associated with accessing the internet, often influenced by the number and quality of available options.
• Literacy: Skills of those who connect to the internet, knowing where to go and what to do once online.

Back in 2012, Technical.ly started tracking locations that offered free wifi — from rec centers and libraries to coffee shops — and launched a tool to find one nearby. We started in Philadelphia and Baltimore, with plans to expand, but the needs shifted. 

Most focus has traditionally been on infrastructure. The Biden administration’s Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program targeted adding 25 million Americans, with investments heavily focused on rural communities. City of Baltimore digital equity director Kenya Asli told me at the Fed that her dense, if poor, city — which is unusual in owning its conduit network — never expected any BEAD funding.

Instead, city leaders today focus on choice and cost. A Philadelphia household internet survey sponsored by the Centri Tech Foundation in 2021 found that affordability was cited by 42% of households as their primary obstacle to broadband adoption. The same survey noted that 32% of Philadelphia households were “subscription vulnerable,” i.e. likely to drop coverage when facing an unexpected bill. Programs to subsidize connectivity, spurred by pandemic limitations, helped drive Philadelphia’s broadband adoption from 70% in 2019 to 84% by 2021, yet many residents remain unaware of available assistance programs or struggle with the process to enroll successfully. Similar growth took place in cities across the country.

Judging by our experience with other utilities, we may never reach full coverage. Even today more than half a million American households lack running water, according to a new analysis, largely due to affordability — there are infrastructure issues too. About 15,000 households are estimated to not have electricity, again reflecting a mix of infrastructure and affordability challenges. 

Many cities may be nearing the upper bounds of adoption then — according to the Census, roughly 9 in 10 households have broadband, though speed and reliability are points of contention. The focus has moved to affordability, with competition one means of accomplishing that, noted Benton Institute policy director Drew Garner — from the digital divide to “digital opportunity” he said. Since the pandemic, Philadelphia city leaders and longtime access advocates have trialed direct subsidy,  “digital navigators”, expanding virtual-learning support and using existing city infrastructure such as rec centers and libraries.

All neighborhoods should have similar access and similar costs, both for households and businesses, Garner said. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. 

Digital redlining — the tendency for broadband infrastructure and adoption to mirror existing wealth patterns — exacerbates economic disparities, said Joshua Breitbart, an exec from New York’s ConnectALL Empire State Development and a longtime broadband analyst. Left to their own devices, internet service providers prioritize locations with high-income residents who are reliable customers, underscoring the government’s responsibility to ensure equitable internet access across jurisdictions.

In a fall 2020 interview at the pandemic’s height, I asked an Internet Essentials program leader if ISPs like Comcast could effectively serve as both top-tier provider of a dominant technology and as “a food bank of the internet,” ensuring every resident has access to a necessity of modern life. As telecom programs go, Internet Essentials is well-regarded and everyone I’ve met from that team has always been serious about their work. But, she noted, progress would only come through “partnership” between industry, government, education and more, because like food security, digital equity is a thorny aspiration. 

As a different Comcast exec told me in a 2022 interview: “If we want communities to be healthy, places where our employees live, if we want customers who can pay for our service, then we must participate in long-term community investment.”

That much is agreed upon. A Federal Reserve bank representative opened their event by saying broadband infrastructure connects directly to the full-employment half of their dual mandate. Low broadband adoption rates correlate strongly with higher inequality, as an International Monetary Fund analysis showed during the pandemic. Just as good public schools boost economic mobility, so does access and comfort with high-speed internet. In short: access matters.

Can digital equity work without net neutrality?

The pandemic laid bare the necessity of at-home broadband, and most Americans now agree it’s essential, emphasizing connectivity’s role in education and work.

Nearly 93% of households with school-age children engaged in some form of distance learning from home, per the Census Bureau. At the pandemic’s peak, half of all paid work hours were remote, per one analysis — 10x pre-pandemic levels. Practically all job postings across industries are now advertised online. Moreover, approximately 1 in 10 American workers are fully remote, and nearly 60% of tech workers operate remotely — four times the 2019 rate.

All 50 US states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico now have “digital equity” plans, according to the Benton Institute. Yet policy questions like net neutrality — a principle preventing internet service providers from discriminating between websites or services — remain unresolved, as underscored by January’s federal appeals court ruling. The implications of treating internet access like public utilities remain highly contested. (A pair of progressive Pennsylvania progressive state lawmakers introduced legislation on the topic just last week.)

Any disagreement about the importance of internet accessibility often boils down to whether access is a contributor to or consequence of economic success. It’s likely both, said Kathryn de Wit, the Broadband Access Initiative project director at The Pew Charitable Trusts. But teasing out causation and correlation is tricky, in part because technologies continue to advance. Opening the tap and flipping the switch have become clear-cut: Either you have it, or you don’t. In a historic context, internet access is still relatively new, so its definitions still range.

A century ago, Edison was nearly 100 miles away as he illuminated that tower at Philadelphia’s 9th and Sansom streets, which had been named in his honor by the Philadelphia Electric Company, one of the country’s first privately chartered electric providers. It was marketing for a transformative service, an employee engagement event and a demonstration of the power and promise of a still-nascent technology.

That tower, owned by a medical hospital since 1973, still symbolizes how Philadelphia once ceded a crucial technology to industrialists, as Penn researchers put it, without fully grasping its importance. Today, the corporate successor of that monopoly, PECO, whose archives preserved Edison’s involvement, remains integral to Philadelphia’s electric grid.

Just as electricity was in the 20th century, broadband access is now an economic necessity. Policymakers today face decisions about broadband infrastructure and equity that will shape Philadelphia — and cities across America — for generations.