For as long as the internet has existed, there has been a divide between those who have it and those who do not, with increasingly high stakes for people stuck on the wrong side of America’s “persistent digital divide.” That’s one reason why, from the earliest days of his presidential campaign, Joe Biden promised to make universal broadband a priority.

But Biden’s promise has taken on extra urgency as a result of the pandemic. Covid-19 has widened many inequities, including the “homework gap” that threatened to leave lower-income students behind as schools moved online, as well as access to health care, unemployment benefits, court appearances, and—increasingly— the covid-19 vaccine, all of which require (or are facilitated by) internet connections.

Whether Biden can succeed in bridging the gap, however, depends on how he defines the problem. Is it one that can be fixed with more infrastructure, or one that requires social programs to address affordability and adoption gaps?

Prices for broadband plans in the United States average $68 per month, according to a 2020 report by the New America Foundation, compared to the $10-$15 that some studieshave suggested would be actually affordable for low-income households and the $9.95/month that Phillips currently pays through a subsidized program. 

It’s all evidence of how broadband policy has been chasing the wrong metric, says Gigi Sohn, a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy and former counselor to Democratic FCC chairman Tom Wheeler. Rather than focusing on whether people are served by broadband infrastructure, she argues that the FCC should be measuring internet access with a simpler question: “Do people have it in their homes?”

When this is taken into account, the rural-urban digital divide begins to look a little different.  According to research by John Horrigan, a senior fellow at the Technology Policy Institute, there were 20.4 million American households that did not have broadband in 2019, but the vast majority were urban: 5.1 million were in rural locations, and 15.3 million were in metro areas. 

This is not to say that the internet needs of rural residents are not important, Sohn adds, but underscores the argument that focusing on infrastructure alone only solves part of the problem. Regardless of why people don’t have access, she says, “we’re not where we need to be.”

More at MIT Technology Review.