Infrastructure? Two Internets?
This post is premised on the idea that the events of the current pandemic have decisively demonstrated the internet as basic infrastructure for housing, as defined in the UN Right to Adequate Housing.1 In that regard, the internet joins garbage collection, roads, sewerage, water, and electricity as essentials that connect housing to its community. Examples of the essential nature of the internet are the ability to work from home, as well as the ability to attend school from home, and to access the vast educational resources of the internet.
As for “two internets,” here are two stories that offer insight into two broad visions of the internet. One internet is the “home convenience” view of private enterprise — an “unnecessity” that private enterprise providers compete to install and from which they have been able to profit mightily.
Read more about this internet, arriving in many United Kingdom communities, in The Guardian: Free fast broadband offered in UK to support home schooling
Sooner rather than later, that connection will begin to cost low- and no- income tenants. Unaffordable now, it will likely be unaffordable tomorrow.
The second internet is one viewed as a “public service,” joining other fundamental public services such as garbage collection that may be administered or performed by private enterprise but nonetheless are guaranteed as a public service.
This second vision of the internet will arrive in low- and no- income homes as a permanently free2 service. Read more in the Northern Kentucky Tribune: Completed Covington Connect initiative eroding ‘digital divide’ thanks to 124 Wi-Fi access points
Footnotes
- Here is the UN’s Fact Sheet on the Right to Adequate Housing
- Needless to say, nothing is truly free, and as a public service would most likely be paid for through taxes.
