Technology

In the ‘Year of 5G,’ Many Americans Still Struggle to Get Online

With families working and studying from home, the need for affordable bandwidth has never been greater.

Illustration: Wenkai Mao for Bloomberg Businessweek

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By Joshua Brustein

March 26, 2020 at 9:00 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

This article is part of the March 30, 2020 issue of businessweek.

This spring the U.S. government was planning to focus on its strategy for rolling out fifth-generation wireless networks, bringing faster internet connections to power movie downloads, telemedicine, self-driving cars, and more. Officials want to see 5G, now available in only some cities, ramped up quickly and to keep Chinese companies such as Huawei Technologies Co. from dominating the critical networking technology. Then the new coronavirus hit, sending workers and schoolchildren home to try to do their jobs and continue their education on laptops.

Suddenly 5G took a back seat to a much more pressing problem: Tens of millions of Americans don’t have access to reliable internet connectivity, or can’t afford it, and will have trouble communicating, working, and attending classes online without it.