The Digital Divide, Broadband Access, and the Pandemic

The COVID-19 crisis has forced our country to completely restructure the way many of us live, work, and learn, and access to broadband has become essential to advancing public health, education and equity.

Local governments are at the forefront of the pandemic response, and many are struggling to figure out what they can do to expand access to broadband as quickly as possible, but they may not know what policies to pursue and they may not know whether they have local authority to pursue them.

This guide from the Local Solutions Support Center and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance – The Digital Divide – highlights the scale of the broadband problem (before and during the pandemic) and important policies that local governments can consider in the short and long-term to increase access to broadband. It also explains why efforts to expand broadband must center racial equity in order to be effective.