INTERNET ACCESS REMAINS ELUSIVE
Digital divide a huge problem in urban America
Sofia Hernandez is a top student at Bruce-Guadalupe Community School on Milwaukee’s south side. She asks for books, not toys, for her birthday, and wants to become a doctor when she grows up. • But in a virtual classroom or an after-school Zoom meeting, she struggles with an unreliable home internet connection. • “Her computer freezes every five minutes,” said her mother, Magdalena. “It has to stop and restart, and then she misses half the lesson.” • Money is tight. The family lives with Magdalena’s parents who are retired on modest pensions. Magdalena can’t work outside of the home now because she suffers frequent seizures brought on by a head injury. • Their home internet access is through a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot, provided by Sofia’s school, because the family can’t afford better service. Nine-year-old Sofia could go to the public library to get online, but her mother worries about COVID and neighborhood crime.
“Her block is not safe. It’s really hard for her to even ride her bike,” Magdalena said.
It’s now widely known that inadequate internet service has become a technological plague in rural America, made all the more acute by the COVID-19 pandemic and the acceleration of digital dependency.
A significant portion of people in rural Wisconsin — and millions across the country — lack an online connection that’s sufficient for even basic tasks such as uploading a video or taking an online class.
However, what’s often lost in the discussion is the number of urban households without decent internet service, also known as broadband, even though access would seem to be a given.
The families hurt the most are those who can least endure another hardship: people of color in low-income neighborhoods.
Estimates vary, but it’s widely accepted that millions of city dwellers are at risk of falling behind in education, employment and health care — just like their rural counterparts — because they lack adequate home internet access.
An Alliance for Excellent Education study last year found that about 31% of Black and Latino families didn’t have home broadband, compared with 21% of white families.
“Every single leader I have talked to has said this is a tough issue,” said Angelina Panettieri, a legislative director with the National League of Cities.
Only about a year ago, Microsoft Corp. found that 340,000 people in Milwaukee County — more than one in three — weren’t using the internet at true broadband speeds.
That finding echoed Census Bureau data showing that at least 30% of households in 185 large and mediumsize U.S. cities didn’t have a wired broadband connection.
Though the percentage of urban households lacking service is lower than in rural areas, the sheer number is nearly three times greater, according to Census Bureau data. Furthermore, there are wide disparities between rich and poor neighborhoods.
“That’s the big digital divide,” said Doug Dawson, a broadband consultant from North Carolina who’s worked with cities and rural communities in many states, including Wisconsin, to improve their internet access.
Cost is primary issue in cities
In rural America, the lack of internet service sometimes stems from a connection not even being available in thinly populated places. There’s an affordability problem as well, but many folks who could easily afford an upgrade, and desperately want one, are limping along on service that hasn’t improved in 20 years.
In cities, more often the divide is about the monthly cost of the internet and deeply rooted social economic problems.
In 1980, for instance, the annual median household income in Milwaukee nearly mirrored the national figure of $54,000. By 2018 — the last year for which data was available — the national figure had risen to $64,000 while the city’s had fallen to $44,000, according to a recent report by the Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education at the Marquette University Law School.
At the same time, the city’s poverty rate has consistently been above 20%. More than one in five people don’t have enough income to cover basic needs such as food and shelter, much less the internet.
“The digital divide is being exposed for the wideness that was already there. And it’s getting wider,” said Denisha Tate McAlister, a business strategist and former chief strategic officer of Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Milwaukee.
Some older homes and apartment buildings were never wired for broadband, and the cost of installing it now could be a significant barrier for the property owners.
For example, Milwaukee’s Carmen Schools of Science and Technology said it once worked with a family, that had four children, for weeks to get them a wired home connection.
But it would have cost up to $15,000 to bring the cable to their neighborhood, and the internet service provider refused to do it unless the residents agreed to foot the bill.
“Literally, within that neighborhood, they couldn’t access broadband if they wanted to,” said Mike Nguyen, chief of staff at Carmen Schools.
“It just feels strange that in 2021 people should have to confer with neighbors to get internet service,” Nguyen said.
There’s been a lack of choices in service providers as well.
For example, the Housing Authority of the city of Milwaukee said Charter Spectrum refused to install internet service at Westlawn Gardens apartments on North 62nd Street unless it was given exclusive rights to all of the homes.
“We told them we wouldn’t do that because it’s always better when you have multiple service providers. It gives residents a choice of different speeds and price points,” said Willie Hines, the agency’s associate director and former Milwaukee Common Council president. “Competition generally brings down prices.”
AT&T agreed to provide broadband at Westlawn Gardens with fiber-optic cable direct to each residence.
Charter Spectrum, in response to Journal Sentinel questions, said the dispute was a misunderstanding about competitors using their wires. Regardless, the residents at Westlawn can’t get Charter Spectrum service.
Some service providers abuse system
Another barrier in urban broadband is that many people aren’t aware of subsidies and discounts available to lower the monthly cost.
The federal Emergency Broadband Benefit launched during the pandemic offers a $50 monthly subsidy for families that meet certain low-income requirements, such as having a child enrolled in the free or reduced-price school lunch program.
Yet just one in 12 of the eligible households were enrolled in the $3.2 billion program, according to FCC data released last summer
The signup rate in Milwaukee has been higher than the national average, with around 7% of all households in the city, not just those eligible, having enrolled, according to the FCC data.
“I see it as a bridge,” until there’s a more permanent solution, said David Henke, the city’s information technology director.
Still, many eligible families haven’t enrolled.
Some living in the U.S. as undocumented immigrants won’t sign up because they fear it would put them in a government database that could lead to deportation.
“The trust issue is huge,” said Angela Siefer, executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, an advocacy group for home and public broadband use, local technology training, and support programs.
Some internet service providers have abused the Emergency Broadband Benefit by enrolling unqualified households in order to collect the subsidy, which goes directly to the provider and is deducted from a customer’s bill.
Sales agents falsely claimed that households had children attending schools where all the students were eligible for free and reduced-price lunches, according to an FCC Office of Inspector General memo issued shortly before Thanksgiving.
The requirement has “commonly been abused by (service) providers and their sales agents as an entry point for fraud,” the memo said.
One of the more egregious examples was a Florida school that had no more than 200 students, but where a broadband provider claimed 1,884 households were eligible for the benefit.
Some service providers used their business address as the “home address” for families they enrolled. Also, the Office of Inspector General found there were families enrolled in Alaska that actually had a home address in New York.
The memo didn’t name the companies suspected of fraud but said a handful of them were responsible for most of the abuse uncovered in Alaska, Florida, Arizona, California, Colorado and New York.
“Evidence shows this is not consumer-driven fraud. Enrollment data directly links certain service providers and their sales agents,” the Inspector General memo said.
In response, the FCC said it would now require documentation to sign up for the Emergency Broadband Benefit and would refer “bad actors” to its enforcement bureau.
The timing of the findings comes as President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan is poised to spend $65 billion on broadband expansion, including $14 billion to extend the EBB with $30 per month subsidies for low-income families in urban and rural areas.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said he’s worried that massive amounts of funding appropriated by Congress for broadband could result in waste, fraud and abuse of the programs.
“I am worried that this report by the FCC’s Office of Inspector General may be just the tip of the iceberg,” he said in a statement.
Potential for a big impact
In the Lindsay Heights neighborhood on Milwaukee’s north side, where poverty has overtaken what once was a thriving hub for middle-income African Americans, a lone wireless transmitter points toward a different future for urban broadband.
It’s mounted on the Innovations and Wellness Commons building near North 16th Street and West North Avenue.
The building with modern architecture and a rooftop garden is home to a cluster of small businesses aimed at improving quality of life in the neighborhood.
Microsoft Corp. chose Lindsay Heights for a pilot project to provide low-cost internet service using wireless transmitters, called nodes.
If it’s successful, the project could be expanded to other parts of the city as well.
“The more neighborhoods, the better,” said Antonio Butts, executive director of Walnut Way, a nonprofit focused on revitalization in Lindsay Heights.
Microsoft executive Vickie Robinson grew up in the area, so this program is especially important to her. She’s had family members who lacked home internet service. Some who had it struggled with the cost.
Robinson is general manager of Microsoft’s Airband Initiative, which in addition to Milwaukee, has launched pilot programs in Detroit, Cleveland, New York, Memphis, Los Angeles, and El Paso, Texas.
While the programs use different technologies, they share a goal of offering high-speed internet for around $15 a month without a contract or credit check.
In Milwaukee, Microsoft has partnered with the nonprofit PCs for People to provide low-cost refurbished computers and digital literacy training, in addition to internet service, in Lindsay Heights.
Danielle Wilkinson recently received one of those computers and the internet. Earlier, she and her children struggled with a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot that frequently stalled out.
“I feel like this is worth a try,” Wilkinson said.
The goal is to reach about 1,700 people in the Lindsay Heights area through a mesh network of transmitters mounted on public buildings.
“If we can figure it out here, I think we can figure it out anywhere,” Robinson said.
The plan is to hire people from the community to install service and run the system, giving them a say in its future. That kind of approach boosts community pride, said Renee Logee, executive director of United Neighborhood Centers of Milwaukee.
“I think it has the potential to make a huge impact,” she said.
Haunted by Milwaukee experience
In 2004, Donnel Baird moved to Milwaukee to work on Sen. John Kerry’s presidential campaign. What he experienced in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods left a lasting impression.
He saw folks clamoring for temporary, $10 per hour jobs knocking on doors to get out the vote. In practically no time, he recruited 2,500 workers.
He spent time in neighborhoods so disconnected from the rest of the city, with such extreme poverty, it had created a subculture of hardened individuals.
“I am still haunted by my experience in Milwaukee,” Baird said.
But from it, a passion was kindled for creating opportunities in disadvantaged communities. In 2014, Baird cofounded BlocPower, a New York-based green energy firm that’s transformed more than 1,100 buildings into energy efficient facilities and generated technology jobs in low-income areas in the process.
BlocPower has green energy projects underway in 24 cities including Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Oakland, California. One of the firm’s financial partners is the Madison-based American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact.
Recently, BlocPower expanded into low-cost internet service in the Bronx, N.Y., with plans for a similar project in Milwaukee in 2022.
The Bronx has some of the poorest neighborhoods in the five boroughs that make up New York City. It has the city’s highest rate of hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19. Roughly 40% of the children live in poverty.
At one of the worst points in the pandemic, Baird was approached by community leaders in the Bronx about expanding a wireless broadband network he’d established in Brooklyn as part of his firm’s green energy work.
“We’re going to duplicate what we’re doing here in the Bronx in Milwaukee. What we have in mind is really exciting because there are two neighborhoods with 60% unemployment rates for African-American men, and we’re going to train and hire those young men to install and own an internet system.” Donnel Baird BlocPower co-founder and CEO