Giving Compass' Take:

• Lara Fishbane and Adie Tomer discuss the lack of access to broadband across America and why we need to address it. 

• How can funders work to close the gap? Where are the gaps in your community? 

• Read more about the importance of broadband in America. 

How would you feel if half of the homes your neighborhood didn’t have electricity? Or if a quarter didn’t have running water? It’s hard to imagine, mostly because the United States benefits from near-universal access to electricity and water.

That’s not the story for another crucial utility: broadband, or high-speed internet service. Digital platforms have transformed most parts of daily life, from how we talk to one another, to how we consume media, to how we travel. But those platforms are only meaningful if you can access them via broadband.

In 2018, more than 18 million American households lived without a broadband subscription. This means that today’s digital economy is out of reach for far too many people.

The digital gap between urban and rural parts of the country tends to garner the most attention. However, our analysis of the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) data tells another story: The majority of digitally disconnected households live in metropolitan areas, and the gaps are especially large when comparing neighborhoods within the same place. Effectively, some residents live in digital poverty even as their neighbors thrive.

Until metropolitan leaders and their state and federal partners can address the situation, we can expect a kind of digital segregation to persist across metropolitan America.

Read the full article about the broadband gap by Lara Fishbane and Adie Tomer at Brookings.