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Comment by donw | Hacker News Reader

I’m going to expose my ignorance here, but in 2020, how many low-income families are there without internet?

Also, would it the solve not just be to provide loaner 4G access points to those families?

The US is one of the top per-student global spenders on K-12 education, so the money is there.

In California, at least, students are eligible for subsidized ($20/month) LTE hotspots. Apparently it is provided by Sprint as part of an agreement they made when they leased spectrum that had previously been set aside for educational use. These could and should been made free for low-income families.

https://foundationccc.org/What-We-Do/Student-Success/Califor...

I'm not from the US, but it sounds like the state could and should leverage this to the maximum.

These are likely insufficient for video-based schoolwork or materials. That would max out any quota set for these hotspots

Theres no quota on the Sprint grandfathering. Check out the Calyx institute hotspot for an example (and a cool org)

Quite a few - CA has over 1.1 million homes without internet access (this means no mobile internet as well): https://connectednation.org/blog/2019/10/09/new-u-s-census-f...

I’d be interested to see how that breaks down in terms of household sizes, location, etc. Is this a rural problem? Urban? Are those households primarily childless, or with school-aged children?

> Also, would it the solve not just be to provide loaner 4G access points to those families?

It probably would, but I don't think most school districts planned for a multi-week or multi-month pandemic. So buying access points and Chromebooks, finding all the students who need them, and distributing them, probably won't happen in the short term.

I think this has likely become worse in recent history. I expect all of these households have "internet" access through a smartphone, but won't have a home connection to use with school issued chromebooks.

If you don’t have a strong need for it, paying for cellular internet for every phone plus a home connection becomes hard to justify, and the cellular ones are probably the more useful of the two, for most people.

here in china i get home internet with sim cards for the whole family and a mobile data quota thrown in for free

Many people have internet, but only on phones. So you could ask them to use the phone or tether a loaned laptop, but this will raise costs and other equity issues.

Apparently in my school district it is estimated to be between 20-35% of students.

When things are cleared up with covid - just go to the library and see all the seniors who have next to nothing, then think - how many of them have a grandchild in their care?

How many do? Do we have data? And what benefits are currently available to them?

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