Increasing Internet Access at the Speed of Trust: Sean Gonsalves on the Digital Equity Act

Danny Caine 
Did you take for granted the Internet connection that allowed you to download and listen to this podcast? about the one I use to record and edit it? A stable and fast Internet connection is so essential to everyday life in 2025 America that at least for those of us with ready access to one, we hardly notice it except when it’s broken. A good connection is essential for podcast production and listening, yes, but also for education, medical care, commerce, and countless other aspects of American life. It’s so obvious that it almost doesn’t need to be said, but I feel I must say it because there are those in power who are acting against the idea that a good connection is a human right. The Digital Equity Act was signed into law with bipartisan support on November 15th, 2021 as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

The law is one of a few measures in the infrastructure bill aimed at ensuring access to reliable broadband for all, regardless of money, race, and the rural urban split. In doing so, the law goes a long way towards solving the so-called digital divide. The 2021 infrastructure bill and its component Digital Equity Act, along with a few other measures, represented the biggest investment in broadband access in many years.

In May 2025, President Trump announced that he was canceling the Digital Equity Act, freezing or suspending all grants awarded for it. The decision is likely to face legal challenges because the act and the money appropriated for it represent an action that Congress has already taken. Still, the cancellation of the law will have wide ranging and devastating consequences in the digital equity space.Efforts to close the digital divide for the eight populations served by the bill are now halted in their tracks just as they were gathering speed.

Here to talk to us about these consequences and what can be done is Sean Gonsalves, ILSR’s Associate Director for Communications on the Community Broadband Team. On today’s episode of Building Local Power, Sean brings his years of experience and expertise to explain to us the consequences and impacts of the cancellation of the Digital Equity Act.

Sean thank you so much for being on Building Local Power. Really happy to have you here.

Sean Gonsalves 
Glad to be here.

Danny Caine 
I think it’s fair to say community broadband is about connections. I want to start by asking what’s your connection to broadband? How long have you been working on these issues? And how have you developed an understanding of the issues and relationships surrounding the question of community broadband networks?

Sean Gonsalves
When we say the term community broadband, we’re talking about sort of an umbrella term. And we’re talking about essentially owned and locally controlled broadband networks. These are municipal broadband network systems. There are broadband systems that are built and owned and operated by electric cooperatives, telephone cooperatives, nonprofit organizations.

And then there’s also Tribal broadband providers. in other words, publicly owned, locally controlled broadband networks that are not owned by the big monopoly providers that everybody is pretty familiar with the Comcast, the of the world, the Charter Spectrums of the world. And so that’s what we do there. I’ve been with the team now for five years and you asked a little bit about kind of

You know, how I developed an understanding of it. I, know, candidly, when I came here five years ago, learning the nuts and bolts of different wired and wireless Internet access technologies and telecom policy was a pretty steep learning curve, but the basic issues are simple access to high speed, high performance Internet service is a basic necessity in an Internet connected world. You know, anyone who wants participate in society Internet access. Unfortunately, there’s tens of millions of people in the United States that don’t have it.

Danny Caine
Well, it’s so interesting that you kind of learned on the job. I’m not even on the Broadband team, but I really enjoyed learning about it. We had representative Dante Pittman on the show. He’s from Wilson, North Carolina. And one of the things we talked about is Greenlight.

Sean Gonsalves
⁓ great network there. Yeah, one of the premier municipal broadband networks in the country in Wilson.

Danny Caine
Yeah, and it was a thrill to read your background on it and to talk to him about it and learn about the issue. So you mentioned that the 10 million people who don’t have access to broadband, tens of millions.

Sean Gonsalves
I, well, actually tens of millions. Here’s the dirty secret in broadband. No one really knows how many people don’t have access to where broadband is accessible or not because the FCC has done such a terrible job at getting granular data as to exactly where broadband access is available or not, meaning the physical infrastructure that all we have are estimates.

And the maps rely on self-reported data of ISPs. And as you can imagine, a lot of the big carriers kind of have an incentive overstating the case. So for example, if they hook up one particular subscriber in a building that has multiple dwelling units, they get on the map to claim that everyone has access.

And it used to be up until recently where if they delivered Internet access to one particular household in an entire census track. They could count that entire census track as having broadband access. But when you look and talk to people in communities and local communities, and there are efforts are underway across the country to document these things, that when you talk to folks in these local communities, you quickly find out that actually there isn’t a wire to that particular or this particular group of homes, even though it may be across the street from someone who does have access. And so that’s the reason why we have this estimated number. So tens of millions, 20 million, 30 million perhaps. And the reason why some people don’t have access is in some instances is because the physical networks are not there, mostly in rural communities, but many more people don’t have access because it’s too

We pay the highest in the developed world for Internet service, largely because the broadband market is broken and is ruled by a handful of monopoly providers. know, when you’re the only ball game in town, you can extract a premium from folks for something as important as Internet access.

Danny Caine
There have been attempts to solve this with policy, mainly recently with the Digital Equity Act, which is part of the infrastructure bill in 2021. Tell us a little bit about the DEA. What is it? How does it work? Who’s it meant to serve? And then second question, tell us what happened to it recently.

Sean Gonsalves 
That’s right. So just to back up just a tiny bit, you mentioned the infrastructure bill in 2021, really a watershed moment in terms of federal investments in broadband to expand broadband that when I talked about those tens of millions that don’t have access, the infrastructure bill, there’s several components in there related to broadband. And the idea is, this was going to finally solve the digital divide that we were going to get to a place over the next several years where everyone who wanted high speed Internet access would at least have access to it.

Now that word access does a lot. So the biggest chunk of broadband funds in the infrastructure bill is the BEAD program. That is to build, it’s $42.5 billion. That is to build new networks, mostly in rural areas, but build networks in areas where there isn’t broadband access.

A companion piece of legislation also embedded in the infrastructure bill is the Digital Equity Act, which was a $2.75 billion program that was designed to work in tandem with the BEAD program. So the way to think about it is the BEAD program is all about the wires, getting wires to everybody’s home to get the Internet access. But when you’re talking about Internet infrastructure, it’s not a if you build it, they will come type of situation.

There are other barriers so that even if there’s access, there are other barriers, affordability being big, but there’s other things, digital skills, not having the digital skills to be able to take advantage of the benefits that Internet connectivity can provide. And then there’s things like even like the cost of devices. And so the Digital Equity Act, as you hear people sort of, our program is pretty much focused on the infrastructure side.

And then there’s sort of this digital equity side where people are focused on everything but the wires, as it were. All of the barriers that prevent people from taking advantage of having home Internet access, largely around whether it’s a lack of devices or whether it’s a lack of digital skills to be able to truly take advantage. So the Digital Equity Act was focused on those particular programs.

In that act itself, it identified what they called covered populations. There were eight covered populations, elderly, veterans, in rural communities. One of the categories was racial and ethnic minorities. All of that is based on study after study after study looked at demographic groups within the United States experienced the biggest barriers.

What are those groups? Those groups are identified in the Digital Equity Act. They refer to them as covered populations. And so what happened in May was president Trump announced on true social on some random Thursday night and just said the Digital Equity Act is racist and therefore I’m declaring it unconstitutional.

And by presidential decree, it’s terminated. So, overnight, essentially, you know, in the following days, the NTIA, which is administering this program for the federal government, part of the treasury department, sent out notices to all of the organizations that had been approved for Digital Equity Act grants to set up programs to support things like digital skills training, to train digital navigators. The way a lot of people see the Digital Equity Act and the way that I see it in a lot of ways is it’s essentially a workforce training program. Now for folks that are elderly and retired, not so much. So that’s more about how can we get folks to up to speed in terms of digital skills, to be able to operate online safely, to do things like take advantage of telehealth, to have an access online government services, to do online banking.

You know, there’s a million things like everything we do nowadays, you know, it relies on Internet connectivity. So, states had created plans to stand up programs across states to address these issues and by canceling terminating the Digital Equity Act. It sent a lot of folks reeling.

Danny Caine 
That’s exactly what I want to talk about. And I want to address the issue of consequences to this from two different angles. I think first, mentioned the agencies that are taking this funding and implementing these new programs. us about what you’re hearing. How are they reacting? What are they saying about how this is going to impact their work, regardless of whether or not it actually ends up being canceled? I’m sure it’s introduced some degree of chaos into their work. So tell us what you’ve been hearing.

Sean Gonsalves 
For sure. I mean, first of just the shock of know, people have been working on plans for years. Now, this work had been going on piecemeal with philanthropy and things of that nature. Nonprofits have been working on these issues, kind of piecemeal. But to do this type of stuff at scale and to really these necessary programs really needed the federal investments. So by pulling those away, it does a couple of things.

One that isn’t quite as obvious to folks that are not in this field is that a lot of the state broadband offices who develop these plans and are also in charge of administering grants within their states, a lot of the broadband offices are relying on portions of this Digital Equity Act funding to support the salaries of people that work in these offices. So one of the immediate impacts are it could, it’s potentially gutting a number of broadband offices just as they are in the process of ramping up these various grant programs to expand broadband access, mostly through building new networks. So that’s one immediate issue. The other issue is this.

If we’re spending tax dollars investing in building new networks, as I mentioned before, it’s very important that people can then take advantage of these new networks. So it would behoove not only the federal government, but even Internet service providers that in order for these new networks and or these expanded networks to be financially stable, you need as many subscribers as possible.

It’s almost like, everybody needs to drive a car, but you’re not doing anything to make sure people know how to drive a car. It’s like, if you’re selling cars, you want people to be able to drive cars. And so with the Digital Equity Act by undercutting and undermining programs that are designed to get folks up to speed in many cases get devices in people’s hands so that they can get online.

It doesn’t seem to make a lot of financial sense to be investing all of these billions of dollars and building new networks if you’re relying on people who need digital skills training in order to take advantage of them. So these are some of the things that folks are trying to wrap their minds around. No one has yet filed a lawsuit that I’m aware of. We can probably expect there may be one coming soon

In the meantime, The National Digital Inclusion Alliance, for example, just held their annual net inclusion conference where like, you know, it was the biggest gathering of digital equity advocates across the nation. Two folks from our team had been there. We’ve all been there previously. But groups are now scrambling to find ways to carry on the work the face of this news. And that means sources, frankly, you know, whether that’s through philanthropy, or, or elsewhere, The point is no one really knows the answer to what’s going to happen.

But there are still lots of folks who are trying to stay in this field, although a number of people who had been organizations were getting ready to ramp up training of digital navigators and such, some of these folks are being laid off. I mean, it’s a devastating blow to the very idea that every American ought to have Internet access.

It’s really cutting the legs out from under a really important program to make that a reality.

Danny Caine
I think that leads me to my next question. And I’m wondering about those tens of millions of people who, for whatever reason, whether it’s cost or digital literacy, don’t have access to reliable broadband Internet. In terms of real world consequences, what does it mean for those folks to kind of yank the rug out from under the Digital Equity Act?

Sean Gonsalves 
Angela Seifer, who’s the head of NDIA touched on some of this at Net Inclusion and she actually called on folks who had gone through digital skills training courses and such. And so it means young people not being able to, you know, for example, get educational attainment, through digital skills training and online access to education, folks were able to get their GEDs. This one particular person was able to parlay his digital skills training to not only get the education he needed, but to also get a job as a forklift taking away people’s ability to have digital navigators like people like my grandparents who could really benefit from things like telehealth, which means, you know, having, you know, being able to monitor chronic health conditions, being able to meet with healthcare providers remotely in many instances saving transportation costs. Right now hospitals are closing all over rural America and and to get to healthcare facilities for some you’re talking, an hour or two drive I mean in all of those type of problems so in the real world it means undercutting people’s ability to do these kind of things. We live in a digital economy.

More and more commerce, even government services are moving to online only. In order to access this stuff, people need to know how to use this stuff and to be able to do these things. look at the state of Maine, for example, the president made a big deal about, this is racist. Well, in the state of Maine, there’s not a lot diverse communities Yet in the state of Maine, 89 % of the state of Maine falls in the covered populations category. Why? Because there’s a lot of what they call older Americans that live in Maine and Maine is almost all rural.

So programs in the state of Maine that were designed for the elderly that were designed for people in rural communities are being pulled from them. That’s what it means on the ground.

Danny Caine
And assuming there is a lawsuit and it is successful and funding is restored, I would imagine that even if the best case scenario happens, it’s still gonna slow the implementation of all of these projects, this kind of uncertainty that we’re in right now.

Sean Gonsalves
For sure, for years, for years. And not only that, you think about a lot of the people that do the work on the ground, the digital navigators, the local been investing in digital equity and planning and developing relationships. A lot of these organizations were instrumental in signing people up for the Affordable Connectivity Program when that existed, which was the $30 a month discount program that Congress allowed to expire and is now gone. That’s hammer that’s kind of hanging over folks’ head. But in this space, you hear this among people on the ground, you have to move at the speed of trust. And when these programs, when you’ve been working with people and saying, hey, sign up for this program or get involved in this class and then all of a sudden it’s gone, that really undermines community trust in very profound and deep ways. so even should the funding be reinstated to ramp back up, to rehire people, to ramp back up and then to try to repair the damage around trust and whether or not this thing is really going to come to fruition.

You know, that could take a decade or more.

So it’s not a good space, but fortunately there are thousands, literally thousands of people working on these issues across the country who are very committed to this because it’s fundamentally important. One of the friends of our particular program and somebody we’ve worked with before, his name is Joshua Edmonds. He’s the director of Digital C, which is a…

in Cleveland, they’re building out a network at low cost, $18 a month. They also lot of digital equity programs and digital skills training and such. Josh says this issue is really like the civil rights movement of the 21st century. Internet access is fundamental to be able to participate in a modern economy. We’re not talking about people just going on social media and watching Netflix.

We’re talking about work, education, health, business, commerce, entrepreneurism, you name it, it relies on people’s access to Internet connectivity. And so this is a fundamental issue that thousands of people committed to solving this challenge.

And we think at the Community Broadband Networks Program that the ideal way of solving this challenge is by a much more wholesale approach, which is not just having digital equity programs, but also building and operating local networks. Because if you look at cities that have done that, Hillsborough, Oregon, for example, it’s structured in such a way they have this thing called the Bridge Program, where if you’re in a financially qualified household, you can get fiber service for $10 a month. And they provide free laptops, they work with the library, with digital literacy programs. Chattanooga, EPB Fiber is like the golden child of municipal broadband networks. They’ve got a program, they work with the American Enterprise Center where they do similar things, but they offer free Internet service for a decade for any school-aged child that’s on free and reduced lunch program. Pulse Fiber in Loveland, Colorado. These municipal networks, it speaks to the fundamental difference in the way they’re structured and their incentives. In the private market, when you’re talking about these big ISPs, I’m not talking about the small mom and pop community based ISPs, I’m talking about the Verizon’s, the Comcast, they’re committed to their shareholders and returning profit to their shareholders. When you build a local Internet service as a utility, it’s treated as such.

So, and then you have the voice to be able to say, we want to dedicate a certain portion of our revenues to do things like make sure that financially struggling households can still get connectivity. That make sure that they can have access to digital skills training. When it’s locally based like that, you are in a position because you own it and operate it, you’re in a position to make those decisions.

Otherwise, you’re just going with the hat in hand to the AT&Ts and the Comcast of the world and begging and saying, please, quote unquote, do the right thing. But frankly, it’s not Comcast’s job to solve the digital divide. You know, that’s not their business model. I mean, McDonald’s is terrific at delivering food at scale, but nobody looks at McDonald’s and says, solve world hunger. You know, so when you have these municipal broadband networks, like I just mentioned, those are the kind of things that local communities are then in a position to deal with these issues. So that when things like, the Digital Equity Act is canceled or the affordable connectivity program has ended. that I just mentioned, they don’t rely on those things to deliver these services.

Danny Caine 
You just walked right into my last question. It was just like, how do people withstand this? And are places better suited to deal with this kind of yanking of federal funding? I think you just answered that. But my final question then is like, what can we learn from places like, you know, Loveland or Wilson, North Carolina, these places that are kind of ahead of the game and already running with their municipal networks?

Sean Gonsalves 
Well, the first thing we learned is something kind of obvious, which is if it exists, it’s possible. I love to remind people of that because frankly, there’s a ton of people in this country that have no idea that municipal broadband or that model even exists. know, people think, ⁓ only AT &T or Comcast or Charter Spectrum or whomever can do this. No, the technology is well understood.

Communities can build this communities build infrastructure all the time. We build roads, sidewalks, water systems, sewer systems, schools. All of which by the way is far more expensive than building broadband networks but local communities build infrastructure all the time and so it’s a matter of education, commitment, and political will. It’s not a question of technology.

When you look to some of these other communities, it helps us to rediscover the notion and the idea that even in this crazy world that we’re in, where it seems everything is falling apart at the federal level, that local communities have the power and can marshal the dedication and the will because this isn’t easy. If it was easy, it would have already been done.

But it’s a reminder that what can happen when a small group of committed people come together and move forward on a project that has been done elsewhere, it can be done in multiple communities. And we’ve seen the words start to get out and over the past five years, there’s really been an explosion of interest in this particular model and communities who are now building their own networks.

Danny Caine
Sean, thank you so much for coming on Building Local Power. Best of luck dealing with all this and telling these stories and I look forward to hearing more.

Sean Gonsalves 
Great to be here, man. Thanks so much.

Danny Caine
Sean, along with the rest of ILSR’s community broadband team, have been hard at work charting the consequences of halting the DEA in much more detail than we could here. They’ve got a series of articles investigating on-the-ground reactions and impacts, and I encourage you to find links to those in the show notes. They’ve also covered the issue in greater depth on their podcast, Broadband Bits. Find links to a few episodes in the show notes.

Finally, Community Broadband’s website, communitynetworks.org is a treasure trove of everything you could possibly want to know about municipal broadband. So make sure to check it out. Here at Building Local Power, we’d love to invite you, our listeners, into the conversation. If you have thoughts about this or other episodes, ideas for future guests, or if you just want to get in touch, send me a note at [email protected]. And as always, if you like what you hear, please like, subscribe, review, and share with your friends.

This episode of Building Local Power was produced by me, Danny Caine, with the help of Reggie Rucker. I did the editing with help from Téa Noelle, who also composed the music. Thank you so much for listening, and see you in two weeks.

Community Broadband Initiative’s reporting on the cancellation of the Digital Equity Act:

• Digital Inclusion Leaders Brace for Impact
• Christopher Mitchell Responds to Trump’s Abandonment of Digital Equity Act
• Pushback Mounts Over Trump Administration ‘Termination’ of Digital Equity Law

Community Broadband Bits Podcast Episodes about the Digital Equity Act:

• President Trump Targets Digital Equity Act —What It Means for Communities and the Future of Connectivity – Episode 646 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast
• The Hidden Cost: The Ripple Effects of Canceling the Digital Equity Act – Episode 647 of the Community Broadband Bits Podcast

communitynetworks.org