Closing California's digital divide

Many readers will be familiar with the “digital divide,” or the gulf that divides those who have modern internet access from those that do not, and how rurality is a factor in the lack of access for many Californians. 

There is bipartisan movement at the national level to close the divide. But why does this gap persist in California, and what is the state doing to support its rural residents needing reliable, modern internet connections?

Unserved communities are found in urban and rural areas, but their difficulties in accessing high-speed internet have different causes. Urban households tend to have the infrastructure in place but run into affordability issues. In contrast, rural areas’ barrier to broadband access stems from a lack broadband of infrastructure altogether. Income also plays a role in access to internet connected devices. Across the board, rural areas tend to have less access to broadband than urban areas. This divide widens as internet speed increases.

In rural areas, the main barriers to broadband internet access come from the difficulty of building infrastructure in remote locations, internet service providers’ (ISPs) lack of interest in building said infrastructure, and difficulty in displacing entrenched incumbent internet providers.

Funding currently exists for rural areas to build internet infrastructure through the California Advanced Services Fund (CASF). The CASF provides funding to unserved areas, which are defined as an area that does not have an ISP offering downstream speeds of at least 6 megabits per second (Mbps) and upstream speeds of at least 1 Mbps. These speeds are benchmarks from 1990s-era internet speeds, insufficient for many modern web-based communication apps, especially when multiple users are using the same internet connection.

Current law requires the CASF to fund broadband infrastructure projects of 10 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps. Though these speeds are faster than the “underserved” benchmark, they are still insufficient because most streaming video applications (including remote learning, telehealth, and video conferencing) require speeds of at least 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream. Downstream and upstream refer to the rates at which an internet-connected machine can receive and send data, respectively.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Senator Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach) introduced S.B. 1130, a bill that sought to increase high-speed internet access for Californians by expanding the number of areas and households eligible for CASF funding to build broadband infrastructure. Though the bill died, in no small part to opposition from cable companies, Sen. Gonzalez introduced S.B. 4 this year.  S.B.4 has more modest goals than S.B. 1130 and an improved ability for the CASF to collect revenue. Where S.B. 4 is modest, other bills seek to fill in the gaps S.B. 1130 would have filled.

S.B. 4 would redefine “unserved” as an area that does not have access to facility-based ISP offering speeds of at least 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream. The redefinition would expand the number of communities eligible for CASF grants who previously were not considered unserved. Projects seeking a CASF grant would be required to deploy infrastructure capable of providing speeds of 100 Mbps downstream and 20 Mbps upstream, or the Federal Communication Committee’s most current speed standard, whichever is faster.

Cable companies opposed S.B. 1130 last year, contending that the bill would divert CASF funds away from rural communities behind because money will go towards improving existing infrastructure in urban areas. The assertion that there will only be projects done in urban areas is premised on the assumption that ISPs alone will be taking on infrastructure projects. ISPs base this assumption on their historical behavior of forgoing infrastructure build-outs in rural areas due to low return on investments.

The proposed changes to the CASF could improve broadband access in rural areas by incentivizing infrastructure development where it remains unbuilt. The bill would create a bond program for local governments to borrow long-term, low-interest loans to develop fiber optic infrastructure.

Further bolstering rural communities’ ability to access funding for fiber optic infrastructure projects is Senator Patricia Bates’ (R-Laguna Niguel) S.B. 732. The bill would create the multi-billion dollar Rural Broadband Infrastructure Fund, to be used for broadband infrastructure projects of at least 100 Mbps upstream and 100 Mbps downstream speeds in underserved rural communities. The bill defines underserved rural communities as those without a facility-based (i.e. non-satellite-based) broadband provider offering broadband service at speeds exceeding 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream.

These high speeds may be especially useful in rural areas where laying fiber optic cables is exceedingly difficult because the infrastructure would facilitate fiber to short range wireless towers.

Without the private sector’s single-minded focus on quarterly profits and with a mandate to serve their communities, local governments and co-ops are well situated to bring future-proof broadband to unserved areas. Both bills could also increase competition in the ISP market by giving smaller internet providers, local governments, and co-ops to access CASF funds when building out last-mile infrastructure to rural communities.

We will continue to monitor the status of these bills. While the divide remains to be bridged, it is at least heartening to see state legislators from ostensibly metro areas keeping the interests of rural people at the front.