State digital equity plans submitted under a federal program revealed a unanimous conclusion: Availability and affordability of the Internet are the most pressing barriers to achieving universal access.
The findings come from a review of digital equity plans submitted by 50 states and two territories conducted by the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Broadband Access Initiative in preparation for federal grant awards allocated under the $2.75 billion Digital Equity Act.
“From the analysis, we surfaced a few things,” said Kathryn de Wit, director of Pew’s Broadband Access Initiative, during a Fiber Broadband Association webinar on Wednesday. “The first is that unilaterally, all 52 plans said that the primary barrier to digital equity was the availability and the affordability in broadband.”
“You never get that much agreement among states,” de Wit emphasized.
The second major trend, according to de Wit, was the need to address digital skills and access to devices. “States found fairly consistently that access to appropriate devices was a challenge, but also folks being able to apply the digital skills that they have, either in new ways or up-skilling.”
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