Ultimate Success of BEAD Depends on Digital Literacy: New America
While digital skills are key to people's ability to compete in the current economy, a recent New America survey found that answers vary widely on how many Americans actually have such skills, said Jessica Dine, policy analyst at New America’s Open Technology Institute, during a Fiber Broadband Association webinar Wednesday. Part of the problem is that, at least in the U.S., the term “digital skills” is poorly defined, she said.
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If people lack the skills they need to go online, BEAD-funded deployments will have limited effect, Dine argued. Affordability and deployment are important, “but a huge percentage of people who are offline are offline because of some kind of skills or knowledge barrier,” she said. “We need to ensure that people are actually connecting to the networks that are connecting to their houses.”
There's no "coherent method" of defining the necessary skills or “coherent language to describe them,” Dine said. “We certainly don’t have a shared method of measuring them or checking people’s actual skill levels.”
Dine raised concerns about Trump administration cuts to digital equity and non-deployment funds. “Both of those programs would have funded things like broadband affordability, programs for disseminating devices” and “digital upskilling and digital navigation programs.” Under previous rules, program participants would also have needed to report progress on addressing skill levels and barriers to access, as well as what approaches work, she said, but those requirements are no longer part of BEAD.
Fiber Broadband Association President Gary Bolton said it’s clear that this administration won’t use non-deployment funds for digital literacy or equity. At the same time, NTIA has decided that low earth orbit satellite providers won’t receive any of their BEAD allocations without subscribers, he noted. Providers can’t go into a market that’s never had broadband coverage and say, “'Now you have your fiber connection or your LEO connection, you’re good to go,'” he said, adding that someone must address digital literacy.