When the last serviceable location in the township is passed and lit, it is tempting to declare the work finished. It isn’t. It’s barely begun. Availability is the moment the map stops being about where the wire isn’t and starts being about what people do with it.

To see why, it helps to name the map we are using. The Digital Opportunities Compass is a measurement framework, built on more than twenty-five years of research, that guides communities through digital transformation by looking past a single question of access. Rather than asking only whether broadband has reached an address, the Compass organizes the work across six dimensions: Contexts (the social, economic, and cultural conditions of a place), Governance (the policies, leadership, and decision-making that steer the work), Connectivity (infrastructure, affordability, and adoption), Skills (digital literacy and training), Applications (how technology is actually used), and Outcomes (the effects on health, learning, income, and civic life). It is, in the plainest terms, a common map that lets local leaders assess where they stand, clarify where they want to go, and align partners around a shared vision.

Seen through that map, universal availability satisfies exactly one of the six dimensions — Connectivity. The framework was built deliberately so that we would not mistake that single dimension for the whole journey. The research is unambiguous on this point: access, device affordability, and digital skills are the foundation, but digital opportunity is achieved sustainably only when the entire ecosystem is considered — not at the moment the fiber reaches the pedestal.

So the next step is to change the question we are asking. We move from “What should we build?” to “What is actually working?” That is the pivot from deployment to adoption, and it is where the real capacity-building begins.

Practically, that means turning our attention to the things a buried conduit cannot solve on its own. Affordability is usually the first wall people meet — the household that has the wire at the road but cannot carry a monthly subscription is still, functionally, on the wrong side of the divide. Then come devices, digital skills, and the human infrastructure of broadband — the digital navigators, librarians, educators, and trusted neighbors who stand between physical infrastructure and actual use, and without whom the network is only potential energy.

This is where I keep returning to Kentaro Toyama and his Law of Amplification. Technology amplifies existing human and institutional capacity; it does not manufacture it. A township that has universal availability and a school with a technology-ready curriculum, entrepreneurs prepared to work remotely, and residents comfortable enough to try will watch that fiber compound into real Outcomes — health, learning, income, and civic participation. A township with the same fiber and none of that readiness will watch the signal sit idle. The wire is identical in both places. The amplifier is the community.

The economic stakes of getting this right are not abstract. Peer-reviewed research on rural communities makes the point plainly: it is adoption, not deployment alone, that drives prosperity. Counties that move past availability into high broadband use — above eighty percent — show business growth rates 213 percent higher, gross domestic product growth 44 percent higher, and per capita income growth 18 percent higher than comparable counties that remain underused. Just as telling, the places that never close the adoption gap tend to lose businesses, jobs, and population. The lesson for any township crossing the availability finish line is that the return on a decade of infrastructure investment is realized only when the network is utilized and effectively leveraged, and that the gains accrue most to the residents already there rather than to new arrivals. In other words, adoption is not a soft benefit layered on top of the build. It is the mechanism through which the build pays for itself.

And here is the gentle reminder I would fold in: technology is the T in STEAM — Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics. The infrastructure is the enabling letter, not the whole word. The point was never the network. It was the aspiration the network makes reachable — the person who can now start the business, reach the clinic, or finish the degree.

So, in my words, the next step after universal availability is this: stop measuring wires and start measuring lives. Build the Governance and local capacity to sustain what was deployed. Invest in the human infrastructure. Close the affordability and skills gaps. And put in place a way to keep learning — the Compass to see where you are, and something like the Digital Opportunities Intelligence Network (DOIN), our policy learning machine powered by Project Compass, to tell you not only what happened but why, and what to do next.

Availability is the starting line we spent a decade racing toward. Adoption, and the opportunity it unlocks, is the race.

Sources of Inspiration

This essay draws on frameworks and research that continue to shape the Compass series:

  • The Digital Opportunities Compass — the six-dimension framework that anchors this work. Rhinesmith, C., Dagg, P. R., Bauer, J. M., Byrum, G., & Schill, A. (2023). Digital Opportunities Compass: Metrics to Monitor, Evaluate, and Guide Broadband and Digital Equity Policy. Working paper. Ann Arbor, MI: Merit Network, Inc., and East Lansing, MI: Quello Center, Michigan State University.

  • The academic foundation behind the Compass — for the pairing of a practitioner tool with a statistical “policy learning” approach. Bauer, J. M., Dagg, P. R., Rhinesmith, C., Byrum, G., & Schill, A. (2023). A Comprehensive Framework to Monitor, Evaluate, and Guide Broadband and Digital Equity Policy. Presented at TPRC51. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4557340

  • The human infrastructure of broadband — for the recognition that digital navigators, educators, librarians, and trusted community members are essential to turning access into use. Rhinesmith, C., & Prasad, R. (2025). From the Ground Up: Investing in the Human Infrastructure of Broadband, with contributions from C. Stratton and L. Clark. Wilmette, IL: Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.

  • Sustaining the human infrastructure of broadband — for the framing of where this work has been and where it is headed. Bryne, A. (2025, January). The Human Infrastructure of Broadband: Looking Back, Looking Around, and Looking Ahead. Wilmette, IL: Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.

  • The economics of adoption — for the evidence that broadband use, not deployment alone, drives income, entrepreneurship, and business investment in rural places. Weinstein, A., Erouart, M., & Dewbury, A. (2024). Beyond Connectivity: The Role of Broadband in Rural Economic Growth and Resilience. Hartland, VT: Center on Rural Innovation (CORI).

  • The Law of Amplification — for the principle of technology as an amplifier of existing human and institutional capacity rather than a substitute for it. Toyama, K. (2015). Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology. New York: PublicAffairs.

  • The Power of Yet — for the growth-mindset framing of community capacity as a condition that can change over time. Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House.

  • The Digital Opportunities Intelligence Network (DOIN) — my own concept for a continuous community measurement and policy-learning system that moves us from what happened to why, and what to do next. DOIN builds directly on the Digital Opportunities Compass and the broader body of digital-opportunity research cited above, extending that foundation into a decision-support and policy-learning framework. Kronemeyer, J. F. (2026). Digital Opportunities Intelligence Network (DOIN). EUPConnect Collaborative, inspired by Project Compass (Merit Network) and Bauer et al. (2023).