Digital Equity and Broadband Report

In a world increasingly reliant on digital access, broadband equity is more pressing than ever. Before the 2020s, the lofty goal of “broadband for all” could be dismissed as an idealistic dream. Today, after widespread reliance of schools and workplaces on remote communications technologies became commonplace during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, access to high-functioning broadband has been rightly reframed as a need rather than a luxury. With this reframing has come the realization that a very real and harmful “digital divide” is plaguing many of America’s localities.
This project represents an attempt to understand that divide in the hopes of ultimately addressing it. It represents the continued progress of efforts by the Albemarle County Broadband Accessibility and Affordability Office and the Regional Digital Equity Plan Coalition (RDEP), in partnership with the University of Virginia and Penn State University and funded by the federal “Your Home, Your Internet” Affordable Connectivity Outreach Grant Program. Initial analysis was conducted by graduate students in the University of Virginia’s Urban and Environmental Planning Program. We analyzed previously collected quantitative data from the RDEP coalition and data from the U.S. Census Bureau to generate conclusions for each separate dataset as well as inter-regional comparisons and composite metrics of broadband accessibility. During the qualitative portion of the project, we conducted original research by conducting focus groups with local community partners. The end goal of this research was to aid and inform the creation of a Regional Digital Equity Plan for Albemarle County, Virginia and surrounding areas.
This report contains our findings. It is subdivided into an introduction to broadband access and the project’s goals, a section dedicated to qualitative analysis, and a section dedicated to quantitative analysis.
The qualitative portion of the project first aimed to identify common themes in the focus groups. Systematic content analysis revealed that the themes most frequently mentioned in the focus groups were literacy/digital literacy skills, learning curves, affordability, digital inclusion, and connectivity.
Teams also generated next steps, in the form of suggestions for the County, from the main findings of the focus groups. They include (a) the implementation of digital literacy programming for children and adults; (b) the provision by Albemarle County of easy-to-use desktop computers in central gathering spaces; (c) the establishment of laptop loaner pools; (d) greater advocacy by the County on behalf of residents when collaborating with broadband providers; (e) a basic understanding that not all residents have or use smartphones; and (f) the need to continue researching this topic.
Quantitative reports were generated from four different data sets. These four data sets each address a different set of questions related to digital equity in the region. The four groups focused on (a) comparing Albemarle County to analogous counties nationwide, (b) disaggregating the characteristics of census tracts with different levels of broadband adoption (i.e. income, race/ethnicity, gender, rural/urban, own/rent, job type), (c) examining speeds and preferences from RDEP surveys and associating those data with local demographics, and (d) creating composite metrics of broadband access including schools data, census data, and speed tests. Major findings from the groups included the importance of prioritizing residents’ upload and download speeds to improve sentiments about internet in the region. Another product of the quantitative analysis was the creation of a composite metric to determine the quality of broadband access in a given census tract.