{"id":153234,"date":"2020-06-05T06:00:16","date_gmt":"2020-06-05T11:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ict-pulse.com\/?p=153234"},"modified":"2020-06-30T09:12:47","modified_gmt":"2020-06-30T14:12:47","slug":"meaningful-connectivity-standard-realistic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ict-pulse.com\/2020\/06\/meaningful-connectivity-standard-realistic\/","title":{"rendered":"Meaningful Connectivity: what is the standard, and is it realistic?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Internet access has been a longstanding measure of connectivity \u2013 whether people are online or offline. The Alliance for Affordable Internet is proposing a new standard, meaningful connectivity. We discuss what it means, and whether the proposed minimum thresholds as appropriate.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI) recently launched a campaign for us to revisit how we measure Internet access. Typically, when we speak of Internet access, it is whether or not individuals are connected, or not connected, to the Internet: whether they are online or offline. However, and according to A4AI, that measure gives no indication of the extent to which people are using the Internet, and the quality of the connectivity to which they have access, which inherently conceals the degree of the digital divide in our communities. To that end, A4AI is proposing a new standard be adopted that goes beyond focussing on whether people are online or offline.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Meaningful Connectivity<\/em>\u2019 standard<\/a> measures Internet access across the following four dimensions:<\/p>\n