Walk into the office where Mecklenburg County residents apply for food assistance and you will be immediately greeted by a wall of brochures with resources for low-income residents: medical services, nutritional needs, family counseling and more.
What a reporter could not find was information about an opportunity that could be a lifeline for those who are poor: low-cost access to the internet.
Mecklenburg’s largest internet service providers, AT&T and Spectrum, have such plans. But a team of student journalists from Queens University of Charlotte found weak awareness about them across Mecklenburg among low-income residents and some of the agencies that work with them.
Nowhere was that lack of awareness more obvious than inside an office at Mecklenburg’s Department of Social Services, where people apply for benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Residents who are approved for SNAP (the successor to food stamps) may qualify for AT&T’s low-cost plan, called AT&T Access. But people streaming in on the day that reporters visited said they had not heard about the offer of low-cost internet.
“I’m amazed nobody has heard about this,” said one SNAP applicant, Levoid Ratliff Jr. He said his friends didn’t know about the plans either. “Most people probably don’t know about this. Eight, nine out of ten,” Ratliff said.
Allison Williams, who assisted applicants at the counter, said she also was unaware of the programs and knew of no efforts to let people know about them.
Reporters found similar reactions at other agencies and institutions. They included a branch of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library that is often filled with low-income residents using its internet connections, and the Charlotte Housing Authority, which provides subsidized housing for 22,000 residents.
Spokesmen for Spectrum and AT&T said that they make efforts to get the word out. They would not disclose how many people they have enrolled in their programs. Spectrum’s plan is 21 months old. AT&T began offering its plan about two years ago. Under the eligibility requirements, more than 90,000 Mecklenburg residents could benefit:
— Roughly 94,000 county residents participate in SNAP, potentially qualifying them for AT&T’s plan. The company pledged to provide the low-cost service in an agreement that won federal approval of AT&T’s merger with DirectTV.
— More than 63,000 students qualify their households for the Spectrum plan because they participate in the free or reduced-cost school lunch program in 80 Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
Spectrum also offers the low-cost plan to seniors who are 65 or older and receive a Supplemental Security benefit.
Of the two plans, only Spectrum’s offers speeds that meet federal standards for high-speed internet. That plan costs $14.99 per month. AT&T offers slower speeds for as low as $5 to $10 a month, depending on the speed available at a specific address.
Spectrum and AT&T use different strategies to spread word about their plans.
Spectrum works with national advocates for the economically disadvantaged, including the National Urban League, the National Black Caucus of State Legislators and the League of United Latin American Citizens. The company leaves it up to the national groups to get the word out to their local chapters, according to Patrick Paterno, director of public relations for Spectrum in the Carolina region. Locally, he said, Spectrum distributes press releases and fact sheets about the program. The company doesn’t target low-income residents with promotions about the plan, he said, because that could be viewed as an invasion of privacy.
AT&T said it reaches out to organizations both nationally and locally. Clifton Metcalf, AT&T director of public affairs in the Carolinas, shared a list of more than 600 organizations, including several in Charlotte.
Both companies said they also work with the Charlotte Digital Inclusion Alliance. The alliance encourages public and private agencies to work together to narrow what’s often called the “digital divide.” About 11 percent of Mecklenburg households, or 43,000 homes, were without internet access as recently as 2016, according to the U.S. Census.
Bruce Clark of Queens University of Charlotte helped organize the alliance. Clark is executive director of Digital Charlotte, which is based at Queens’ James L. Knight School of Communication. Other members of the alliance include the city of Charlotte, the nonprofit Charlotte-Mecklenburg Housing Partnership, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library and the Urban League of Central Carolinas.
Clark said the alliance has distributed information about access plans, but assumed that consistent promotion was the responsibility of the internet providers.
That will now change, he said.
“We (alliance members) have to step in and fill the gap,” Clark said. “We have to carve out space and time to just talk about that.”
Tomico Evans, the Charlotte Housing Authority’s senior vice president of client services, said AT&T has been involved with the ConnectHome initiative since November 2017, and AT&T advised the housing authority team about low-cost programming at that time. ConnectHome is designed to improve connectivity for low-income Charlotte residents. Spectrum also shared its low-cost program with housing authority planners in November 2017 and April 2018, Evans said, and some residents benefit from the low-cost programs.
