The First 100 Days: Expanding Digital Opportunity to every home.

Throughout the course of Covid19 global health crisis broadband access has revealed itself to be an important social determinant of health proven to reduce the risk of unnecessary exposure and infection and critical to easing the unequal effects of the U.S. economic shutdown.

As the Biden/Harrison Administration builds their agenda for the first 100 days, getting every American connected to broadband should be a key priority. Specifically, we believe that there are five concrete steps that the Biden Administration can take to make significant strides forward towards addressing and redressing structural inequalities in our country’s telecommunications infrastructure.

Expand Eligibility for Lifeline and the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB): Covid19 has driven record unemployment levels for the Latino community disproportionately impacting Latina women and undocumented front-line workers. Undocumented immigrants have been left out of all previous stimulus efforts and are now facing a growing education gap due to the lack of an at home broadband connection. We urge the FCC to expand the eligibility requirements for the forthcoming EBB by including ITIN numbers as a form of identity verification as an alternative to the social security number requirement currently in place for the Lifeline program. Many internet service providers have already adjusted their eligibility requirements to ensure that those most in need are able to access their low cost options. We encourage the commission to work with internet service providers to establish a baseline of eligibility that considers the diverse needs of those most critically impacted by the ongoing health crisis.

Establish an office of Civil Rights, Digital Equity & Empowerment. HTTP members have engaged as a part of the FCC’s Advisory Committee on Diversity and Empowerment, and we recommend that the agency formally institutionalize the work of the committee by establishing an office of Civil Rights, Digital Equity & Empowerment. The work of this office can lead a strategic planning process to ensure that equity and digital opportunity are central to the agency’s rulemaking, as well as engaging diverse third party stakeholders, and publishing a yearly diversity report.

Expand Latino, Black, and indigenous representation in the agency’s workforce and on the various FCC advisory committees. In order to ensure the needs of historically excluded communities it is important to have a workforce that reflects the demography of the United States. Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) representation in federal agencies is critical to developing and implementing an inclusive tech policy agenda.

Investigate TV, radio, and digital news media for violations that lead to the White Supremacist domestic terrorist attack on the United States Capital through sustained misinformation broadcast through publicly owned broadcast airwaves.

Protect Latino consumers on-line by establishing a comprehensive national privacy law. As digital natives, Latino consumers are uniquely vulnerable to discriminatory data practices that can limit economic opportunity in housing, credit, and employment opportunities based on protected characteristics such as race, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and gender identification. HTTP calls on Congress to protect Latino consumers by passing a comprehensive national privacy law that provides reliable protections for every consumer regardless of where they live, and that encodes baseline civil rights principles.

These five concrete actions present a unique opportunity for the Biden Administration, Congress, and federal agencies like the FCC to establish inclusive public policy solutions that prioritize civil rights protections, equitable access to broadband, and that increase diverse representation in media and in the tech workforce.