https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210401/09125846532/us-press-continues-to-pretend-digital-divide-just-mysteriously-appeared-one-day.shtml

So if you've read Techdirt for any amount of time, you should be pretty well clued in to the fact that US telecom is a heavily monopolized, feebly regulated mess. Regional cable giants like Comcast and Charter absolutely dominate the market, resulting in 83 million Americans being stuck under a monopoly (see this ILSR report). The result of regional monopolization and captured, feckless regulators is obvious and has been for a good thirty years: high prices, comically bad customer service, spotty coverage, and slow speeds. It's not really a debate, though some telecom-allied policy folks like to pretend otherwise.

Yet every time broadband and the digital divide is trending in headlines, the cause of US broadband dysfunction simply isn't mentioned. For example, as the Biden administration released its new broadband plan this week, numerous news outlets once again dipped their toe into trying to cover the digital divide. And time after time after time, news outlets explain that the digital divide exists, but they somehow never inform readers why. When the subject is covered it's just some thing that appeared one day, like Godzilla out of the ocean.