Breaking the Internet

Wells Smith Books

Mystic, Connecticut

WellsSmithBooks.com

© 2021 by Terrence Denoyer

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, visit Wellssmithbooks.com

Editor: Amanda Smith

Copy Editor: Frank Ferreri

Proofreaders: David Irwin, Kellie Wilks

Cover: Damonza.com

Interior: Createbook.org

First printing November 2021.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Denoyer, Terrence - author

Title: Breaking the Internet | How One Community is Working Toward Digital Equity

Description: Mystic, CT : Wells Smith Books, LLC (2021)

978-0-578-32787-7 (hardcover)

978-0-578-94192-9 (paperback)

978-0-578-94193-6 (digital)

For families everywhere who cannot get or afford high-speed broadband in their homes.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Author’s Note

Preface

1. Understand the Problem

2. Mind the Gap

3. The Voice of the People

4. The Problem is Not Only Rural

5. Follow the Money

6. History Rhymes

7. 2021: A SpaceX Odyssey

8. Bright Spots

Communities that Got Themselves Connected

Categories of Connected Communities

9. Dark Spots

10 Exploring Options

The Case for Long-Term Planning

Big Picture Options and Specific Scenarios

11. Equity and Growth

12. Access and Affordability

13. Separation of Layers

14. Going Public Utility

Epilogue

Shout Outs of Awesomeness

About the Author

Endnotes

FOREWORD

WE ALL HAVE MOMENTS in life... moments that make us stop. Literally stop everything. Stop breathing, stop moving, what feels like we stop being able to think. I was reminded of a stop moment when I connected with Terry to reflect on my experiences this last year navigating the COVID-19 pandemic as the Director of Digital Learning and a team member of Ector County Independent School District in Odessa, Texas.

This particular stop moment happened for me in mid-April of 2020; our school doors had been closed and the news had just been shared that students and staff wouldn’t be returning to our campuses that spring. For a month or so prior, the news of the pandemic had been creeping closer and closer to our lives, our families, our students, and our city — and the uncertainty of what we were facing seemed overwhelming at times. Our district team had been running on adrenaline for several weeks.

This stop moment occurred as I collaborated with the team tasked in designing what learning would look like for our students participating from their homes. A cross section of experts and rock stars in our district came together to imagine and enhance the remote learning and teaching experience. Folks from various departments worked inspiringly as one team with a let’s go attitude, as it felt in some ways like the rest of the world was coming to a stop. Ector County ISD had distributed over 30,000 learning devices to our students and a new digital learning framework had been created; our next step was to design lesson plans for teachers that could be used in the upcoming weeks.

As we brainstormed together, we got on a roll — resources, strategies, and activity possibilities were flying. I was thrilled to be a part of this conversation and to see so many sharing #edtech tools and ways to incorporate them into learning for our kids. This celebration was stopped short when a thought came to mind — the thought that caused the stop moment — what about our students without the internet? Would we be able to provide them the same experience without all of these great technology tools? The air left the room (or the virtual conference), as we came upon the realization that the lack of access to the internet many of our students faced was not something we would be able to immediately correct. There was no lesson plan available for that.

At the onset of the pandemic, Ector County ISD was able to provide devices for students, professional learning for teachers, and a variety of resources guiding parents. What we could not provide many of our students was a reliable connection to the internet at home. Throughout this experience, there has been much cause for heartbreak but none greater than our being unable to reach students because of where they live or what their family budget might afford, at no fault of their own. These students without an internet connection have been unable to join their classes online during a time they needed these connections the most. The long-term effects of this has yet to be seen but the predictions for these students are devastating.

The internet is not an abstract cloud. It is constructed of cables, conduit, electricity, glass, light (optics), data centers with servers and racks, protocols, and many other things. It can be constructed poorly. And, it can be broken. I still remember when the selfie taken by Bradley Cooper at the Oscars with Ellen DeGeneres’ phone got retweeted so much in a short span of time, it took Twitter down for about 20 minutes. The phrase that something viral had broken the internet started trending in itself, but this is not just a figure of speech. The signals coming from hundreds of thousands of phones and computers travelling over the infrastructure of the internet simultaneously overloaded Twitter’s data center capacity, causing it to shut down like Texas in a cold snap.

If the internet can be broken, then it can be designed — and made better. It can be engineered and constructed to reach more people at high speeds. That is the premise of this book

When I was asked to compose this foreword, to say I was thrilled is an understatement. I say with great pride that the future of this situation is in excellent hands following the lead of Ector County ISD and our many supporters. I applaud the leadership and unwavering commitment to do what is right, modeled by Dr. Scott Muri and Dr. Kellie Wilks and the connection to a larger stage for this conversation from author Terry Denoyer. All students, in Ector County ISD and beyond, have a right to learn and pursue their potential; this work is not done until all children and their families have that capability. It is for this reason these conversations must continue until we break down the inequalities of the internet and deliver digital equity.

Lauren Tavarez

Two students — two different experiences.

One learner lives in the neighborhood where gigabit internet service is wired directly into her home. Leena has dreams of going to Stanford and majoring in computer science. She is taking several coding courses, even in seventh grade; one through school and one online through Outschool in the evenings. Leena regularly works with data and code sets, pulling down and uploading to Github and Hadoop on a near daily basis. Her side hustle is as a YouTube sensation — or rather her bulldog, Bugsy, has his own channel full of content that Leena films, edits, and uploads a few times a week. Her internet connection never flinches, and she almost never even has to think about it.

The other learner lives in a part of town where the only internet option is DSL, provided by the phone company. Julia loves reading about biology and wants to be a zoologist one day. Julia and her family of four share the home internet connection, and there is rarely a moment when someone in the house isn’t using the Wi-Fi for something. She tries to attend class online but often drops off her Zoom call. She completes some assignments online but isn’t always able to access the videos and interactive content her teacher sends out. She starts to fall behind in math, and though there is an online tutoring service offered by her school, her connection isn’t fast enough to connect to it. With the constant drops, buffering, and slowness, Julia gets frustrated doing anything on a laptop.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

THIS IS A STORY ABOUT striving for digital equity.

To put it mildly, economic and educational opportunities are increasingly accessed via the internet. Many understood this previously, but the COVID-19 pandemic magnified it. As a result, homes and businesses need to be connected to the internet. Those that aren’t constitute the digital divide. Communities of color, Tribal lands, and rural communities are disproportionately impacted by this divide. So, if a large portion of our population cannot get high-speed home internet because they cannot afford it, or there is none where they live, then something is broken. Or, more accurately, something needs to be broken.

Digital Equity is a condition in which all individuals and communities have the information technology capacity needed for full participation in our society, democracy and economy. Digital Equity is necessary for civic and cultural participation, employment, lifelong learning, and access to essential services, according to the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA).¹

As a society, we need a broader range of people to participate in discussions of what their communities and businesses need from the telecommunications industry. There is a tendency to exclude laypeople from conversations about broadband, (and technology, generally, for that matter). A lack of agency or general reluctance to engage might perpetuate because people do not see themselves as technology people. Some might not feel adequately informed of the ever-fluxing and historically complicated telecommunications and information services industries. They might face conversations with technology people steeped in obfuscation and the power dynamics of jargon. Or they might understand quite a lot about community internet access and yet feel powerless against the centralization of oligopolistic, big tech forces. This book is an attempt to crack the wall that is the barrier to the transparency needed by local community leaders facing connectivity challenges.

When more people are involved in discussions (and planning) of community broadband, more ideas are brought to the table. Marginalized groups can contribute new perspectives and new insights. When the goal becomes one of connecting everyone, a more diverse chorus of voices is needed to contribute their needs and question assumptions. It is not just the right thing to do. From a logistical standpoint, this results in a more realistic and feasible plan and therefore, one more likely to succeed. From a community standpoint, the benefits of planning holistically are well documented — more broadband connectivity leads to a more educated people, more jobs, more health options, and more business.

In researching the history of home broadband, I came upon this problem: That millions of people in the U.S. (billions, globally) do not have high-speed internet broadband in their home. This problem was not new. I didn’t discover it. But I wanted to help. And as I began learning more, I found surprisingly few books that could inform the strategies of an underserved community looking to solve the problem, explaining to them their options plainly, or at minimum, highlighting proactive strategies other communities have pursued. A few organizations do this incredibly well, and their research can be accessed on the web, including the Benton Foundation, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), and Broadband Communities magazine. There are others too. They highlight critically important concepts and dive deep into case studies of people around the country taking the issue into their own hands at the local level. I find the ILSR and Community Broadband Networks’ podcasts (Broadcast Bits and Connect This!) to be