Connecting Low-Income Americans to Broadband

Today, approximately 29 million of the 123 million households in the United States do not have high-speed broadband. Despite the availability of affordable broadband plans for the last ten years, 20 million of these households, representing over 55 million people, are offline because they cannot afford an available Internet connection. Many of those unconnected are eligible for federal subsidy programs that are already in place, but either do not know about them or do not know how to sign up. Furthermore, in America’s most unconnected communities, where 38% of households do not have home broadband, 20-25% of these residents without broadband live in low-income apartment buildings. By installing infrastructure for free Wi-Fi into these buildings, we can make a significant impact on closing the digital divide.