The Covid-19 crisis is exposing how the cracks in the US’s creaking digital infrastructure are potentially putting lives at risk, exclusive research shows.

With most of the country on lockdown and millions relying on the internet for work, healthcare, education and shopping, research by M-Lab, an open source project which monitors global internet performance, showed that internet service slowed across the country after the lockdowns.

In late March, most people in 62% of counties across the US did not have the government’s minimum download speed for broadband internet, according to M-Lab.

Between February and mid March, when the pandemic was only just beginning to hit the US, there was a 10% increase in how many counties saw download speeds fall below the government standard, representing about one in 10 US counties, M-Lab found.

In Congress, the Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, included $2bn for schools and libraries to help keep people connected in a draft version of an economic stimulus bill responding to coronavirus, but it was scrubbed out of the final legislation. Instead $200m is being directed to telehealth initiatives and $125m to distance learning.

Gigi Sohn, a former senior staff member at the FCC, said this was far from enough money to meet the broadband needs of people during the coronavirus outbreak. “Congress didn’t take it seriously,” said Sohn.

People fighting to shrink the digital divide, like Sohn, are concerned the increase in internet use is hitting a nation that already had significant disparities in broadband access.

More at The Guardian.