UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Participants promise a candid, data-driven conversation about the largest infrastructure gap in rural America and what can be done about it during a free public event Oct. 12 on Penn State’s University Park campus.
The event, “Disconnected: How the Broadband Gap Holds Rural Pennsylvania — and Rural America — Back,” beings at 5:30 p.m. in 62 Willard Building.
Kathryn de Wit, who directs the broadband access initiative at The Pew Charitable Trusts, will sit down with Penn State faculty members Sascha Meinrath, the Palmer Chair in Telecommunications, and Christopher Ali, the Pioneers Chair in Telecommunications, to discuss why tens of millions of Americans — and hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians — still lack reliable, affordable high-speed internet and how rigorous research can shape better policy at the state and federal levels.
Specifically, De Wit works to translate evidence into state and federal policy. She leads Pew’s broadband access initiative, which works with state and federal lawmakers, researchers and other partners to accelerate progress toward universal, affordable high-speed service.
Her team conducted the 50-state analysis of broadband policy and programs that underpins Pew’s widely used State Broadband Policy Explorer and has engaged directly with broadband offices in nearly 40 states and territories. That work has yielded concrete recommendations for streamlining the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program and has documented what is at stake, for households that remain unserved, in affordability programs such as the Affordable Connectivity Program.
The faculty members from the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications bring additional expertise.
Meinrath measures what official maps may miss. His Center for Rural Pennsylvania–funded study produced a 108-page report and more than 1,200 maps — by county, legislative district and ZIP code — showing that the speeds Pennsylvanians actually experience fall dramatically short of what official availability data claim.
That evidence reframed the broadband debate in Harrisburg and has been cited in legislative testimony. As Palmer Chair, director of X-Lab, and co-founder of the Pennsylvania Broadband Research Institute, he works at the intersection of vanguard technology and public policy and has advised members of Congress as well as White House and Federal Communications Commission staff.
Ali regularly addresses the politics of why rural connectivity fails. He worked with the Center for Rural Pennsylvania on recent research that concluded that the lack of consistent broadband connectivity is a life-threatening challenge for both Pennsylvania residents and first responders who work in rural counties.
Ali is also the author of "Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity," an analysis of how U.S. broadband policy has repeatedly failed to close the rural–urban digital divide — and a proposal for a genuinely national rural broadband plan. His current work examines the financialization of broadband and what the encroachment of private capital means for local, community-rooted provision.
The free public discussion is presented as the inaugural Telecommunications Speaker Series.