Buffalo News - ErieNET
Digital lab offers a new way to bridge the divide, but Erie NET is the answer
A welcome program in Buffalo is helping to ease the digital divide that leaves many residents without home access to high-speed internet. It’s a helpful addition to the essential work of expanding access to a service that is integral to modern life. But it’s also a reminder.
The AT&T Digital Learning Lab at 230 Moselle St., offers 30 computers, laptops, tablets and even a 3D printer for students and their families. AT&T is providing a free digital learning program as part of the project, undertaken with the Buffalo Urban League and Dreamerscorp Inc.
But as useful as it is, it’s also a sign of the continuing challenge. If broadband internet access isn’t as urgent as infrastructure such as electrical service, it’s not that far behind. Those without it suffer a huge disadvantage in living full, productive, healthy lives.
Here’s how Thomas Beauford Jr., the president and CEO of the Buffalo Urban League., put it: “Digital literacy and high-speed internet access is no longer a luxury; it should be considered a critical access point for every community. It’s now a social justice issue, and beyond that, it’s a 21st-century civil rights issue.”
The Covid-19 pandemic underscored that fact. Families without high-speed internet had little chance to schedule a vaccination in the first part of last year or to shop more safely. Children without it had a harder time keeping up with school work.
Broadband internet is the information highway. If you don’t have an entrance ramp – pandemic or not – finding a job becomes more difficult. Seeking health information is complicated, as is scheduling appointments for a variety of services. Someone who doesn’t develop the skills of simply navigating the internet will find his prospects limited.
That’s why efforts such as this, as useful as they are, need to be seen as stopgaps. The same goes for the Buffalo Public Schools’ hotspot program or Spectrum’s temporary Wi-Fi project, based on a $500,000 donation from the Buffalo Bills Social Justice Fund. These generous efforts make a difference in the way that masks do for avoiding Covid-19: They make it possible to cope, but they don’t solve the underlying problem.
That’s among the reasons the ErieNET program is so important to Buffalo and rural Erie County. The effort to expand broadband internet to underserved areas, pushed by County Executive Mark Poloncarz, represents an effort to deal with the problem.
The $29 million effort is well underway, with significant funding coming from the federal government’s Covid-19 stimulus aid. It aims to expand high-speed internet service into areas that lack it, by laying some 400 miles of fiber-optic cable, with internet providers building out “last mile” service connections to homes.
It’s an important development that major providers, including Spectrum, have so far shunned, though smaller providers have expressed interest. It may not fully solve the challenge of bringing underserved areas into the information age, but it represents the best effort so far.
With appreciation for all the other ventures aimed at providing service, this is the one most likely to make a profound difference.
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Citation: Buffalo News - News Editorial Board
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