The US is ready to pay for broadband like the essential service it is

President Biden has compared the need to get internet access to all Americans as essential as delivering electricity to the entire country during the Great Depression. The country’s digital divide—the gap between those who have reliable high-speed internet access and those who do not—is one of the nation’s great inequalities. An estimated one in eight Americans is unable to purchase broadband internet according to BroadbandNow, a group that collects data on internet providers in the US.