AT&T redlines Cleveland’s low-income neighborhoods, digital inclusion advocates allege

AT&T has discriminated against low-income Cleveland, OH residents by failing to upgrade its Internet network in those neighborhoods, alleges a new report from the National Digital Inclusion Alliance and a local digital inclusion organization. Charging “digital redlining,” the report argues that “AT&T has systematically discriminated against lower-income Cleveland residents in its deployment of home Internet and video technologies over the past decade.”

Relying on June 2016 data from the FCC, the report found that AT&T neglected to build its fiber-to-the-node technology to Cleveland’s poor neighborhoods, despite building the network to most of Cuyahoga County, where Cleveland is located. As the map below illustrates, AT&T’s failure to build fiber to its central offices in Cleveland, has left poor neighborhoods with slow Internet speeds (pink) and no video-capable service, while the middle-class outskirts and suburbs of the city have access to faster Internet speeds and video service (green).

Read the full report here.

Links:

AT&T’s Digital Redlining Of Cleveland (NDIA, Mar. 10, 2017)

AT&T’s Digital Redlining (NDIA/CYC, Mar. 10, 2017)