Don't Assume Everyone Has Great Internet
Marketplace Tech did a series of stories recently on internet availability, with lots of good stats and stories. Most interesting to me was how the pandemic has really exposed the gigantic, structural flaws in our total-lack-of-a-system of providing broadband access to the US population.
For example, lots of folks still need to use the library to get online, but now all the libraries are closed.
And kids studying from home? What if they have no internet? Well, mostly they are simply being left behind. School district administrators cannot conceive of kids not having internet.
A few bits to pull out:
About 10% of adults in the U.S. don’t have any access to the internet.
For school “I will drive to an acquaintance’s house, get on her Wi-Fi and download all the videos I need to watch”
Parts of the country don’t have the infrastructure for high-speed internet. The FCC says more than 20 million people can’t get any sort of broadband, no matter how much they are willing to pay. But because of the way the agency calculates that figure, it could be double that.
53 million school kids mandated to stay at home, [and] out of that, about 15 to 18 million, we believe, without broadband access in their neighborhood or in their household.
If you were to go in rural areas where there is less infrastructure, less density, it is not uncommon for you to pay $150 per month for less-than-robust internet access.
14% of the children between 3 and 18 sheltering in place or sheltering at home but cannot complete their homework
More than 129 million people in the U.S. only have one option for broadband
About 18% of African American households in America don’t have a connection at home
There are more than 800 cities across America who have decided they are sick of not having their destinies in their own hands and have taken steps towards providing people with very high-speed, very cheap access.
“…the form crashed on me multiple times. It happened like four times right in a row. When I went back in to restart the form, I’d have to retype everything out again.“
“All professors couldn’t understand how a law student couldn’t have Wi-Fi. Apparently, I was the first person to say anything to them.”
“At the Web Foundation, we’ve coined this idea of an affordability target. We call it 1 for 2, where one gigabyte of data should cost no more than 2% of average monthly income in any particular country… In the Web Foundation’s latest survey of 99 low- and middle-income countries, only 31 reached the 2% target. People in high-income countries typically pay less than 1%.”
Are you designing on the assumption everyone has good internet, attached to a modern computer, at home? Statistically, you probably are, as I see that on most every project. But now try to keep in mind that many have poor or no internet, and that they move in and out of good coverage.
Many people with good access even have poor coverage when walking the dog, playing with the kids at the park, on their commute. So stop designing for best cases, and consider the reality. Here’s some tips I wrote up on designing beyond airplane mode.
The articles, also available as podcasts if that is your thing:
The pandemic has shown us that the internet is everything But there are still deep divides in who can afford access.
Mapping internet access: no clear data on haves and have-nots That's a problem the FCC can address.
Gaps in internet access: Low-income, communities of color most left out Infrastructure and investment matter.
Want affordable, abundant internet access? Competition’s the key. More than 129 million people only have one option for broadband, a study showed.
If the internet was a utility, could more cities provide it? Chattanooga rolled out citywide fiber a decade ago, which has become an economic driver.