School buses are trundling down the block in some US towns — but please don’t try to hop on board.
To reach students without stable WiFi at home, school districts in California, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania are sending buses equipped with long-distance routers to poor and rural neighborhoods.
One Texas school district keeps its buses in park from 8am to 2pm every weekday. The WiFi connection has a 200-ft reach, and families who lack stable internet access at home pull over in their cars to use it.
About 27% of Americans don’t have home broadband access, according to Pew. But now that home internet has become a requirement for many students and white-collar workers, local governments and companies are patching together emergency fixes:
These are temporary salves, and they don’t roll back the underlying problem: Home broadband is more expensive in rural areas than in cities, yet it tends to perform worse.
Some localities are serving up solutions that will let them stream that Beyoncé/Megan Thee Stallion remix even after the pandemic subsides. Western Colorado, for instance, recently put the finishing touches on a DIY broadband network.
Other advocates are pushing for something even bigger: A modern version of the Rural Electrification Act, this time focused on universal internet connectivity.
The timing seems to fit. The REA was signed in 1936 — soon after, you know, that other great depression.