Rural areas in the United States are the least connected. The struggle for many to gain access to high-speed broadband won’t be easy.
It would be an understatement to say that today’s society is heavily dependent on the internet. Since the advent of the World Wide Web, millions of lives have been improved thanks to the introduction of near-instant transactions, accessible communication networks, and other online services. Today, over 4.3 billion people have access to the internet.
Despite the millions of new users each day, some parts of the industrialized world are still struggling to expand the benefits of high-speed internet to rural communities.
In the United States, Native Americans are the most underserved demographic when it comes to broadband internet access in the United States, according to a 2018 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Quantitatively, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates from last year reveals that these people had a 67% broadband subscription rate compared to the 82% rate of non-Native American individuals. The number drops to 53% when it comes to those living on tribal lands.
For many, the most complex tasks involve checking emails or performing internet searches. This produces a range of problems. First, without broadband internet, rural areas may potentially fall behind economically and miss out on quality-of-life advancements.
Broadband, a high-speed form of internet that is much faster than traditional dial-up service, is extremely common, but less so in more sequestered regions. It makes telemedicine and long-distance education possible, allowing individuals to interact face-to-face with a clinician or instructor without having the inconvenience of traveling long distances. It can boost the development of small businesses. As a result, it can also incentivize tribal members to return to their families and culture due to new job opportunities being created in these remote areas.
Second, internet issues make it much harder for Native Americans to participate in the census survey, contributing to inaccurate results and ultimately leading to an underestimation of a state’s population. This means that they would not receive enough federal funding that goes towards roads, health care, schools, housing, and employment programs. In North Dakota, this lack of funding is especially apparent as a quarter of Native Americans in the state have no access to the internet at all.
So why is access to broadband internet so limited? For one, the cost to expand broadband by building large cell towers and cables in sparsely-populated communities might be discouraging for many telecommunications companies. Moreover, another GAO report finds that unreliable data collected by the Federal Communications Commission overstates the availability of broadband internet access in rural areas. This discrepancy prevents federal grants from being awarded to certain areas.
Collecting accurate data is the first step needed to address the issue. Other solutions include creating “opportunity zones” on tribal lands. These would attempt to attract large corporations to low-income areas, speeding up the process of establishing reliable and extensive broadband coverage.
The dilemma has garnered national attention. Numerous presidential candidates in the 2020 election have drawn up plans that would allocate funds to this problem. For example, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren would specifically set aside five billion dollars to alleviate the issue.
In the end, it remains clear that tribal lands will be among the last in the United States to obtain 5G coverage but if the federal government and telecoms step up, quick internet can be something that everyone enjoys.