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When so many of us are doing everything from work to school online, the COVID-19 crisis is shining a big light on the haves and have-nots when it comes to the Internet. The federal government estimates that about a third of all people in rural America still have little or no Internet access. But as NPR's Kirk Siegler reports, some see the current crisis as an opportunity for change.
KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE: When schools in Lockhart, Texas, had to close and shift to remote learning, the school district quickly did a needs assessment. And they found that half of their 6,000 students have no high-speed Internet at home, and a third live in dead zones where no Internet or cell service is even available. This wasn't news to Superintendent Mark Estrada.
MARK ESTRADA: Students who have been historically underserved just continue to have that fate as technology becomes a bigger part of educational practices.
SIEGLER: Fortunately, Estrada was already shepherding through a plan to address this digital divide before COVID-19 hit. It's now being fast-tracked. With the help of a local Internet provider, the district is installing 7 booster towers outside each of its schools. These will beam the Internet into every home that needs it across the 300-square-mile district at a cost of just 30 bucks a year per family.
ESTRADA: We expect to have 700 homes done by July.
SIEGLER: Estrada is keeping one eye on the immediate crisis - the district is also providing about 10,000 meals to needy kids a day - but the other toward the future. Before COVID, schools like Lockhart were already looking to modernize. Sometimes it's more practical to do some coursework remotely, assuming they have workable Internet. Estrada says there's a realization that COVID-19 may forever alter what schools look like.
ESTRADA: You know, certainly, you hear about, it's not going to be a light switch when we come back to school. But you know, I think that this is an opportunity for us to also, you know, really reimagine how we can use our resources.
SIEGLER: An opportunity out of a crisis - this is also the message being pushed right now by Jessica Rosenworcel, a member of the Federal Communications Commission. She's been a lead voice in the push to digitize rural America, especially now amid COVID-19.
JESSICA ROSENWORCEL: I don't think this crisis creates as many new problems as it does expose existing ones.
SIEGLER: Rosenworcel points back to the Great Depression, when the U.S. government paid to bring electricity to rural areas.
ROSENWORCEL: Here's the thing. We did that about a hundred years ago, and it was audacious for infrastructure at the time. We need to do it again. Like we had the Rural Electrification Act before, we need a rural digitization act now.
SIEGLER: Without it, Rosenworcel says rural areas will continue to fall further behind, especially in a new economy where social distancing and remote work might be the norm. The FCC estimates about 20 million people in rural America are without broadband, but it's widely thought that number is far higher. The federal government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars, including a $20 billion program at the FCC, to expand rural broadband. But advocates say it's a fraction of what's needed. And so far, very little new funding has come from the emergency stimulus.
ROSENWORCEL: So right now, we have a lot of scattershot good going on, and I think what we need is a bigger master plan.
SIEGLER: Without a master plan, Rosenworcel says the grants aren't always going where they're needed the most because the government is relying on outdated mapping, and some critical projects then go unfinished.
Matthew Stoehr knows this all too well. In rural Idaho, he's looking out his window, down his driveway. A local Internet company installed its new fiber-optic line almost to the edge of his property before the grant ran out.
MATTHEW STOEHR: So basically, our money went to paying for cable that's sitting in the ground and not used. And that's the kind of project that drives folks crazy, right?
SIEGLER: Stoehr is a tech executive for a company in Southern California, where he lives part time. Riding the pandemic out in Idaho, his only option is satellite Internet. It's slow and unreliable.
STOEHR: When the satellite does start to go south, then I'll switch over to my iPhone's hot spot. But to talk on the phone, I usually have to put the phone on a bookshelf in the corner, which happens to have enough single (ph) - about two bars - that gets me to communicate.
SIEGLER: Stoehr says he's starting to fall behind at work.
STOEHR: Losing productivity by not having the proper Internet is putting a lot of, you know, businesses at risk that I work with every day.
SIEGLER: Before COVID-19, some rural economies were seeing a boom with people like Stoehr wanting to leave the city for a slower pace of life and the ability to telecommute. This trend may accelerate after the pandemic, assuming the digital divide is solved.
Kirk Siegler, NPR News, Boise. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
