Here & Now

Noon Wednesday: Where’s the Disconnect?

Marisa Wojcik:

Welcome to Noon Wednesday. I’m Marisa Wojcik, a multi-media journalist with Here & Now on Wisconsin Public Television. So, despite what may seem like a ubiquitous tool the internet is still not something that every single person in Wisconsin has reliable access to. And it may seem ironic, we’re joining you through the internet, but 17% of households still do not have access to the internet and this is particularly challenging for students, as they’re getting ready to be going into college, going onto their careers. So, today we’re talking about digital inequity and access to these tools with the Department of Public Instruction’s broadband consultant, Bill Herman. Thank you so much for being here.

Bill Herman:

Thank you for having me.

Marisa Wojcik:

So, it’s National Digital Inclusion week and I just want to start with what does digital inclusion or digital equity mean?

Bill Herman:

Well, you touched on it I think already when you talked about the percentage of families that don’t have it at home. Digital equity would mean that all students, from the student perspective, have internet access at home and that it’s high quality access. And inequity means it’s not like that, and you touched on a percentage, somewhere between 17 and 20% of families and students in Wisconsin don’t have internet access at home at all, period. And, we consider that to be a crisis because that’s one out of every five kids that is limited in how well they’re able to participate in school.

Marisa Wojcik:

And, is it strictly access to the internet or is it the tools and the gadgets that we have access to as well?

Bill Herman:

Well, right now we’re just focused, the thing that I focus on in my position and the thing that we’re focused on as a broadband group at DPI is making sure that everyone has access to the Internet. And when you think about it, so many of the tools that we use are online tools more and more. We don’t even need a special program installed on our computer. So, there is an additional aspect to this that we’ll probably get to in a minute, which is devices that kids are provided with at school that they’re able to bring home and it’s become very widespread and it’s not at all unusual for a school, all the kids from third grade up through twelfth grade are provided with a Chromebook or an iPad that they can bring home, and now there’s the gadget, but they can’t use it when they get home if they don’t have Internet access.

Marisa Wojcik:

So, when looking at ratings for Wisconsin, it has some good grades in terms of looking at broadband connectivity or if you’re looking at coverage maps. So, are those maps reliable? Can we count on what we’re seeing with that data?

Bill Herman:

So, that’s a good question because when you look at availability, the first thing people think about is can you buy access where you live? Can you sign up with a provider and get internet access? And that’s the 17 to 20% number that we’re using that can’t, but there’s a much, much bigger number of people who can get access, they have one or more providers in their area, but it’s not very good. An example of this we went up to Vilas County in Northern Wisconsin and talked with superintendents from three different school districts there and they said something like 40 to 50% of their families had access at home and the average highest rate was something like 10 megs a second or even 25, which are not high amounts, and what they were reporting is, yeah, that’s true in the middle of the night. We have fast access in the middle of the night, but at seven in the evening when everyone in our area is trying to get online we can barely get on at all. And that’s significant ’cause if you look at FCC coverage maps that you mentioned or provider coverage maps you’ll get the impression that huge areas of the state have internet access, which is true, but if you look at the actual amount of bandwidth that those people are able to receive and some great maps have been made that compare actual measured bandwidth against FCC advertised bandwidth and what they show is that in almost all counties in Wisconsin people are getting less bandwidth than the advertised amount. So, essentially it’s kind of a hidden problem. You can talk to people in the industry that say, no, this is largely so because it’s such a high percentage of areas have available access, but unfortunately FCC really doesn’t track currently true amounts of bandwidth the people get. And it doesn’t try to hold providers’ feet to the fire at all.

Marisa Wojcik:

And, some numbers that were provided for Dane County because there’s a local initiative this week to work on getting information out about digital equity. Even within Dane County there’s 30,000 families without access to the internet, and you would think in an area that is considered urban or more populous that that wouldn’t be the case, so is that also because of this infrastructure connectivity or is there something else going on there?

Bill Herman:

So, I don’t know what exactly that statistic refers to, but it’s definitely not surprising. When we think of Dane County we think of Madison. But Dane County is a big geographical area and it has areas that are rural, areas that there are very few people per mile, living in. And those are the areas that don’t get served and I know I’ve spoken with some librarians. I’m trying to remember what town it was in, but it was in a rural town in Madison and they got actually angry at suggestion that, you know, you’re in Dane County, you’re covered. So again, I don’t know the numbers but basically any place that doesn’t have a high population density is an area that’s expensive to reach and might have not very good service or no service.

Marisa Wojcik:

But you also referenced Bloomer, and in particular their community which is a little bit north of Eau Claire,

Bill Herman:

Right.

Marisa Wojcik:

so kind of west central

Bill Herman:

Yeah.

Marisa Wojcik:

northwest Wisconsin. They did increase kind of, physical broadband access but there was something else at play. What was happening?

Bill Herman:

So that’s a really cool example, it brings in a bunch of different things. Bloomer School District teamed up with Bloomer Telephone Company, which is a local internet provider in that area, to apply for two different broadband expansion grants, which are grants that are provided by Wisconsin. This year the amount, I think is about $22 million. And they fund telcos to build out to places that currently they’re underserved or don’t receive service at all. The Bloomer project was, the school district said, we would like to have fiber going into every house in the Bloomer area school district, and the Bloomer Phone Company looked at that and said, we’ll apply for that grant. It was worth their while to do it. They had to spend some of their own money, but they also got a significant amount paid for. As result of the project, every house in the Bloomer School District has high-speed fiber coming right to the house, which is fantastic. That’s better than most places even in Madison have. So that was made possible by the Broadband Expansion Grant and by the Bloomer Phone Company that decided it was worthwhile for them to make that investment. I think we touched on it recently when we talked, is a lot of people have fiber coming into their house, but they can’t afford the service. ‘Cause it’s 60, 80, $100 a month. So, in some ways you look at it and say, wow, problem solved. All the houses in Bloomer are connected. But if you step back, you see that a lot of people have fiber in their house and they can’t afford the service.

Marisa Wojcik:

So we might be able to have actual numbers about who has fiber coming into their house or who has some sort of connectivity, but do we know numbers around who can afford internet?

Bill Herman:

Yeah, another great question, and it’s really hard to know that. We survey, and we’re doing more DPIs, doing more comprehensive surveys about, well, they ask questions like, if you don’t have it, why not? First of all, unfortunately we will not be able to get everybody to answer a survey like that, or even very close. Second of all, it’s kind of subjective of whether or not you can afford it.

Marisa Wojcik:

Sure.

Bill Herman:

But what we do know is, poverty statistics. 16% of all the households in Wisconsin are at or below the poverty level. That means that a family of four earns $24,500 a year. Put that in perspective and think about 60, 80, $100 a month for internet access. Probably most of those families aren’t able to afford it. And really asking the question of, can you afford it or not, doesn’t, you didn’t ask this, but doesn’t seem like the right question even though we’re tempted to make that the question. If you look at programs like the free and reduced lunch program, or SNAP, which used to be called food stamps, they don’t ask people can you afford lunch, or can you afford food. If you meet a poverty standard of 135 or 185% above poverty level, you’re eligible for these programs. In fact, there are providers who offer discounted service, which is one hopeful way that if you have one of those providers where you live, that you can get service. And they base eligibility on exactly that.

Marisa Wojcik:

So what happens for a student in particular, that can’t have access to the internet. How much does your education in a K-12 program require that?

Bill Herman:

Great question. Well, more and more, a lot. To give an example, I mentioned that a lot of school districts now provide a device to every kid to bring home, like a Chromebook or an iPad. Something that connects on the internet. So one out of five kids from our statistics don’t have internet access at home. So you’re a kid, you’re in an English class. An 11th grade English class, and it’s 30 kids in the class, and you’re one of six, that’s 20%, who don’t have access at home. Everyone has their device, homework is assigned, they’re gonna be doing something with Google Docs, they were doing research, which is a very common, obviously high school application of the internet. So, whatever 24 of those kids are going to be able to use their device and bring it home and do that work, and six kids won’t. So it’s an immense, not just I, we see it as a huge inequity in education right now, because I think a Pew statistic is 70% of all homework that’s assigned by teachers, you have to do it online. All of us know how much we use computers, and if we have kids we know how much they get online, have to use computers to do their homework, among other things. So, yeah to me the two things that I’d really love for people to be aware of is, we’re talking about 20% of all students, and this is crippling if you don’t have it. So, large, large number of kids are really largely unable to participate in school.

Marisa Wojcik:

So, public schools and DPI is in an interesting position to kind of have a certain gateway to families to understand where their needs are and we know that families don’t only rely on internet for kids to do their homework. So what does DPI hope to do in it’s role in understanding where these gaps are?

Bill Herman:

Well one is what you just said, which is just to understand it, and it would be very helpful for us to know more exact numbers about who doesn’t have access, and then there’s this whole large fuzzy area of, I have access, but it doesn’t really work when I need to use it, ’cause too many people in my area are trying to, and that’s a difficult statistic to come up with. But as far as what we’re able to do, really one of the biggest things is just raise awareness. Like, this is a good opportunity to help people realize how big the problem is and how bad the problem is. We’re also able to work with school districts, to help them learn about things like broadband expansion grants. Typically, they won’t be the applicant, but they can work with their provider in the area, to get a program going like they did in Bloomer. Another major thing that we can help families be aware of is these provider discount programs. AT&T is just one example, I’m not advertising for AT&T, and in fact, the providers offer these discounts because it’s a requirement of a merger. Nonetheless, a lot of the large providers do offer discounted service for people who meet a poverty standard, and the Public Services Commission has made a great tool that is simple to use, and you can just type your address into it, and you can find out which of the providers, if any in your area, offer discounted service, and then you can find out what the details of the program are, and the eligibility requirements. And just making people aware that there are discount programs, and we’re talking like $15 a month instead of 60, $65 a month. And then providing people with a tool that helps them find out which ones actually are in your area, and how do you apply. Working with PSC, that’s one of the biggest things that we’re able to do, is create that awareness.

Marisa Wojcik:

When you say awareness, I was surprised when you said the number was 17 to 20%. It seems to be something that we can take for granted if we always have access to it. Are students, until this gap gets smaller and smaller, are students able to succeed without internet access at home?

Bill Herman:

Well it’s a huge hindrance. I think one thing that schools do, which is also very unfortunate, is, I’ve talked with principals and superintendents who say, well we know that in a rural area, maybe it’s 30% of our kids don’t have access, and so we bought all these devices, we have Chromebooks, we have iPads, a very large investment, but we design all our homework assignments so that you don’t have to do them on the internet. So now the result is because we have this problem with people not having access, an entire school district won’t do things that they could do, if everybody had access. So you create equity, but you also hold the entire school district back. I don’t know if that gets at all the different things that you were thinking about.

Marisa Wojcik:

Sure. So, besides schools, who are the other stakeholders, and who is responsible for helping make these gaps smaller as well?

Bill Herman:

There’s a lot of different pieces to it. You’ve mentioned schools, one thing that schools can do, which I think, a lot haven’t, is invest a little bit less in devices. Like, say okay, we’re not gonna get ’em from all the third graders, we’ll start at fourth grade and use the money that you didn’t spend on devices to purchase other ways for students to get online, and a big example is a hotspot. It’s just a portable device that connects to the internet and provides internet access for, in your house, anybody who’s close to it. Not a perfect solution, because you may not even have good wireless coverage, but especially in urban areas, there have been big successes. Green Bay purchased a lot of devices, and kids who didn’t have access at home were able to take them home and now had access because they made that financial commitment to doing that, in addition to buying devices for kids. So that is a thing that schools can do, although money is obviously always really, really tight for schools.

Marisa Wojcik:

It seems like it’s not a one size fits all kind of a solution…

Bill Herman:

Oh my gosh, no.

Marisa Wojcik:

model

Bill Herman:

No, you’re right. Like, we mentioned Bloomer School District, and that the school district took action to work with the local telephone company, to at least make service available, if not affordable.

Marisa Wojcik:

But will it require more than just the schools?

Bill Herman:

Well it does require more than the schools. And there are big investments that are being made at the state and federal level, and building out broadband. We mentioned the broadband expansion grants. There’s a really large federal program called CAF-II that is similar in that it provides money to providers to build out their networks. One of the drawbacks of those approaches is, well first of all, you can have service available, but you can’t afford it. So it’s not a complete solution. In the others it’s really left to providers to decide whether or not they want to apply for a grant and where they want to build to, ’cause it’s expensive to build out. There’s a reason that people who live, in really remote areas don’t have access, ’cause a company has to build 20 miles of fiber to reach five houses. So, a private sector solution is certainly a part of it, in making funding available. I think ultimately we use the comparison of the Rural Electrification Act, that was in the 30s, where the federal government committed to making sure that every household in the United States would have a wired electrical connection to the grid. And ultimately, I think it will take that kind of commitment, ’cause it is very expensive to build broadband out to everywhere. And it’s a two-part commitment. One is making sure that people have access available, and the other is making sure that they can afford it.

Marisa Wojcik:

Your colleague equated it to any other utility.

Bill Herman:

Right.

Marisa Wojcik:

It’s like, water, it’s like you said, electricity.

Bill Herman:

Right.

Marisa Wojcik:

Do you see it going that way?

Bill Herman:

I view it as being a utility, if you look at it, you can’t really participate in life today if you don’t have internet access at your house. You can’t apply for a job, you can’t find out what’s going on in the world. I think people who live in cities take for granted that it is a given. And in fact, if you’re in your house or in your office and you lose internet access, everybody freaks out, because how are you even gonna operate? So I think in that sense, it’s a utility but it’s not yet recognized as one, and it would take a big, I think political commitment to make sure that everybody can both have access to it and also get subsidized to afford it if they can’t afford it.

Marisa Wojcik:

Sure. All right, Bill. Thank you so much for joining us.

Bill Herman:

Well thank you for having me.

Marisa Wojcik:

For more from Here & Now and Wisconsin Public Television, you can visit wpt.org and thank you so much for joining us on Noon Wednesday.