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The Cost of Broadband is Too Damn High
For many disabled and low-income people, the internet is a critical utility that remains unaffordable and largely unregulated
It was in March 2020, during the first few weeks of the shut-downs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, that my internet started to constantly crash.
My broadband connection, which had always been decent if not top-notch, began to slow to a crawl. This tended to happen during the most inconvenient times — when I was on the phone with a doctor or interviewing someone on Zoom for an article I was writing.
I assumed perhaps that the problem was the surge of people working from home now and using their internet. The speed tests I ran on my machine revealed that even though I was paying nearly $60 monthly for a package that promised 100 mbps, I wasn’t even getting 10 mbps.
If the pandemic has proven anything, it’s that broadband is no longer a luxury good but rather a critical service, on par with having a telephone. COVID has enabled people to work and attend school from home and to access telehealth care. But for many, especially those of us like myself who are disabled, internet services can be difficult, if not impossible, to afford.
And unfortunately, the truth is that access to internet services in one’s home is often impeded by income.
Take for instance one study out of Los Angeles that found that only half of the K-12 families in the bottom fifth of income distribution had access to the resources necessary to utilize online/distance learning, compared to 90% of families in the top fifth income distribution. This likely had negative implications for the learning outcomes of the children in these families even before COVID, and these effects were probably at least partially exacerbated by the pandemic.
What makes this even worse is often the discount programs intended for low income households are often not even available to them because of draconian rules.
When I asked RCN if they had a discount program for lower income customers, they told me they did not. But RCN does indeed have such a program. They just don’t offer it to existing customers. Comcast also has a similar program…
