free government internet service

free government internet service

The Potential Benefits and Challenges of Free Government Internet Service

1. Introduction: The Significance of Internet Access in the Modern World

As business transactions, education applications, browsing for jobs, and voting in federal and state elections are done over the internet, the digital divide (disparities in access to the internet) has the potential to be society-dividing. Hence, if we have unequal distribution of access to the internet and the resulting unequal access, many thought that the Federal Communications Commission’s E-Rate program and the FCC wrote a program that expanded the availability of broadband in high-cost areas. Federal programs like E-Rate and the new program for schools passed were funded by “subsidies to multibillion-dollar businesses, like the entertainment and logistics industry, that leverage the roughly two billion dollars in savings from the life and employment made with their access to the internet.”

In this note, the authors discuss the importance and potential gains of access to the internet that come from a reduction in the cost of access. We also note that many in our society, in many different regions, either lack home access or avoid paying a small fee over and above their access to the electric grid. This suggests majority support for free government internet.

The importance of access to the internet in the modern world cannot be overstated. Aspects like job postings, applications for educational institutions, business transactions, and transactions with federal and state governments are done over the internet. Given that the electric grid is present in a majority of households throughout the country and that this grid is the infrastructure over which the internet signal is carried into the home, the entire United States population is, in theory, able to be provided with the ability to communicate and investigate via the internet.

2. Benefits of Free Government Internet Service

Government internet service can also help overcome market failures. Neither the private nor the non-profit sectors have fully met the public need for internet access. In federal, state, and local support for internet access, “the main criteria in the Competition and stimulus funds were to get the money fast, to give it to the applicants that promised the biggest benefits, and to create jobs. They did not pursue goals such as universal service in a way that would be sustainable, leading to enormous waste in taxpayer’s dollars.” Following a market-driven philosophy that does not consider network profitability for users and the surpluses created by access to modern communication infrastructures, governments might create a market-oriented digital inframarginalizing the socio-economic advantages of within-network competition. Finally, net neutrality suggests that internet service is a communications infrastructure that can be partially governed for public safety and security in the same way as roads and electric power.

The mission of government in providing access to the internet is both to address the obvious problem of digital inequity and to foster other public goods. Most basically, the necessity of internet access has “expanded to everything that has to do with education, health, welfare, jobs and even civic engagement.” The most pressing argument for public provision of internet access is that it allows citizens to communicate with the government, but it is also used for the right to “work or learn from home, manage one’s health, maintain social ties, or access consumer markets at reasonable conditions.” Numerous government services and programs have moved online or can only be accessed online, including Medicaid, unemployment compensation, and consumer financial protections. Because these services are crucial for full participation in society and because they are often the most valuable to the most at-risk populations – older adults, people with disabilities, rural areas, and low-income individuals and families – enhanced broadband service for “the most vulnerable” would further governmental imperative of fairness, equal protection, privacy, or fiscal stewardship.

3. Challenges and Considerations in Implementing Free Government Internet Service

As we have seen, economic models suggest that individuals will underinvest in digital literacy skills and internet infrastructure, leading to a digital divide. On the other hand, publicly funded internet initiatives with varying degrees of success include: Connect2Compete, the UK Virtual Public Network, municipal free Wi-Fi projects in Jaipur, India, Irvine, California, and Chandigarh, India, Brazilian telecenters, a computer and internet subsidy program in Thailand, municipal and non-profit fiber efforts in Baltimore and Austin, a mobile broadband investment in Canada, and ultra-low-cost computing initiatives in Portugal, Russia, and Thailand.

While free government internet service has a number of potential benefits, it also faces a number of potential challenges. In recent years, a growing body of research has suggested that providing individuals with greater access to the internet, and the information that it contains, can lead to substantial increases in numerous social and economic outcomes. With that said, the experiences of some publicly funded internet initiatives have shown that achieving these potential gains in practice can be harder than researchers and policymakers may have originally anticipated. In this section, we will discuss the challenges and considerations that should be taken into account when designing and implementing free government internet services.

4. Case Studies and Success Stories of Free Government Internet Service Programs

A large proportion of government programs either aim to provide all residences government-supported or commercially provided high-bandwidth TDM internet services or aim to reach currently unserved residents by leveraging existing or proposed hybrid fiber and microwave networks. The high cost of programs again contributes to relatively high TDM prices, delays the transition to internet services, and increases the risk of inadequate relevance. Participants in the program could achieve a broader range of economic and social benefits if the programs specifically aimed to reach children eligible for free or subsidized school lunches, with access support often continuing during school term months and summer school holidays, thereby correcting pricing inadequately. Over and over, the second handful of cities targeted for programs has provided a larger relative Community Internal Rate of Return than the most prosperous places.

In this section, we provide a consolidated review of existing global initiatives and success stories which are not usually covered in literature about internet provision. Case studies establish how programs created and directed by governments can effectively leverage public funding and indirectly motivate private sector entities and Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) the transition to national internet services. The report presenting successes among governments in cooperatively nurturing the private sector provides valuable and actionable advice to participants in a partnership forum. Governments are furthered by infusing the underlying policies and principles into their approach to real-world problems. Finally, the paper documents how the pre-existing facilities created, extended, and re-used in each success story are used in others.

5. Conclusion: The Future of Internet Access and Policy

We find that free internet could help low-income families generate significant benefits by improving access to school networks to facilitate their children’s education, reduce the communications cost of between-school information, and improve parental knowledge about education and school choice. We believe there are more gains from programs that complement school internet with other educational programs. In learning from New York City’s internet access program and similar initiatives, which are predicted to expand further, it is important to focus on how to eliminate the digital divide. A detailed assessment of future internet access issues would lead to a comprehensive policy environment that maximizes the benefits that low-income families and individuals would only be able to generate by accessing the internet through home internet, cooperative programs, or other forms of digital inclusion.

Our results suggest that successful implementation of New York City’s Internet Access Study would expand internet usage and lead to sizeable improvements in digital social capital and economic resilience by providing free in-home internet to those without it today. Under such a program, most free internet users would be residents of high-poverty neighborhoods, low-income families with children, people without a high school diploma, and minority individuals. The program’s focus on enhanced economic resilience during crises like COVID-19 and its high cost-effectiveness ratio of up to $200 per promotion on GDP could result in transformative policy change. Such a policy would reduce digital disparities but not entirely eliminate them without additional interventions to increase compute and other resources that also promote digital inclusion.