Class Distinctions in Urban Broadband Networks

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Class Distinctions in Urban Broadband Initiatives
Germaine Halegoua
In E. Polson, L. Schofield Clark, & R. Gajjala (Eds.), Routledge Companion to Media and
Class. New York, NY: Routledge, 2019.
https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Media-and-Class-1st-Edition/Polson-
Schofield-Clark-Gajjala/p/book/9781138493612
The public announcement posted on the “Google Fiber for Communities” (more commonly
known as Google Fiber) events site invited Kansas City residents to “Enjoy a drink or two on us,
plus appetizers and live music by the Zach & Michelle band, as we toast to gigabit speeds. Come
early for a chance to pick up your very own yard sign.” This was an invitation to recurring
“happy hour” events open to the public since Kansas City neighborhoods began signing up for
Google Fiber service in 2012. Residents could show up at the bar, event space, or golf club and
enjoy free beer or wine as they perused Google Fiber products and were encouraged by perky
millennials to sign up for 1 gigabit Internet speeds. Although the event was free, someone at the
door asked for an email and home address in order to verify whether or not your neighborhood
qualified for Google Fiber service. The spaces were brimming with logos and branded
paraphernalia like Google Fiber water bottles, sunglasses, and yard signs as well as displays that
offered speed tests of Google’s service and compared the gigabit network to “basic Internet”
connections. Expansive sign up stations and customer representatives in matching blue t-shirts
that read “That’s What Speed Do” fluttered between MacBook Air laptops and iPads in order to
sign up interested customers. Google Fiber maintained its presence at other community events as
well, hosting booths at block parties, marathons, holiday celebrations and special events hosted

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at the Fiber Space and Google Fiber retail outlets. These promotional events were intended to
demo Google Fiber speeds and consumer products and give away free Google Fiber swag and
snacks in order to encourage people to sign up for the service.
There were similarities in the branding of these events. Large blue signs with white
custom sans-serif font announced the products displayed on sleek, high-definition, flat screen
monitors. The primary colored Google Fiber rabbit made an appearance on brochures or the yard
signs handed out at the door. And where space allowed, there was a replica of a living room that
served as the focal point of the demo and display.
[Insert Image 2]
[Image 2 caption: The living room at a Google Fiber sales center in Lee’s Summit, Missouri.
Image by author]
The living room replica was not exclusive to happy hour events, but is a setting found in
Google Fiber spaces and demonstrations across the country. The Kansas City living room
resembles the one in Salt Lake City, Charlotte, or Nashville. The staged living room serves as a

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space for potential Google Fiber users to sit down, get comfortable, and test out gigabit
technologies and services in a setting reminiscent of the places in which the services would be
installed and used. The living room is an area set up to mimic a trendy, middle class or upper-
middle class living space equipped with gigabit connection and “Fiber TV”: Google’s high-
definition television, DVR, and streaming service. These spaces are outfitted in Scandinavian
modern furniture (possibly from Ikea) oriented toward a flat screen TV atop a sleek console. The
spacious, mock living room offers Fiber TV viewers one to two matching full-size couches or
multiple classically modern womb or egg-shaped chairs, coffee or side tables, and at least one
carefully arranged plant or centerpiece on each surface. There is no clutter in the room and no
wear on the couches, throw pillows, or chairs. The aesthetic choices in interior design replicate
the discriminating minimalism and modern yet functional decor on the pages of a CB2 catalog
with splashes of Google’s signature primary colors.
The room used in these displays and demos is significant because it is ubiquitous, but
also because it has symbolic power. The visual and material cultures on display in our domestic
spaces express and are shaped by our identities and preferences as well as access to and
accumulation of capital. Sociologists have analyzed the choice of housing and design of domicile
interiors as materializations of political economies as well as symbolic exercises in taste, desire,
and distinction.
1
Living room furnishings and other home décor have been read and analyzed as
signals of social status and social mobility in addition to indicators of income or wealth.
2
Aesthetic commodities manifest distinctions of class in the realm of leisure and the living room
is a central location through which to understand class distinctions.
3
The living room is encoded
with objects, decorations, and furnishings that imbue meaning and identity for the household and
act as an interface between public and private worlds.
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Google’s mock living rooms evoked taste cultures that reinforced ideas of the imagined
Google Fiber user as middle to upper middle class. The organization of these living rooms with
designated seating areas and entertainment systems were spaces where the consumer had time to
dwell. The absence of a dining area or furnishing and appliances for other domestic activities
implied that there were other rooms where eating and laundry and sleeping take place. These
staged rooms were not spaces of the imminent future, but the dens of the already connected
enjoying even faster connection on digital devices in the comfort of their homes. The modern
minimalist, design-centered, barely lived-in room on display alongside Google Fiber products
and services was just one of the many ways that Google Fiber for Communities symbolically
hailed particular types of consumers and discursively constructed and codified hierarchical
classes of urban broadband users.
Urban broadband initiatives, including Google Fiber, promise to improve services,
connect communities, and enhance economic development and entrepreneurship in designated
metropolitan areas. More often than not, these broadband plans aim to enable social mobility and
ameliorate digital divides by offering more affordable, comprehensive, and high-speed Internet
connection for diverse populations – including those who have never had Internet access at
home. Based on ethnographic analysis of Kansas City’s Google Fiber for Communities
initiatives, this chapter investigates class-based encodings of Internet access that are common
among urban broadband projects within the United States. Although urban broadband initiatives
that address digital divides attempt to lessen economic barriers to Internet connection in terms of
cost and affordability of access, representations of Internet use and the spaces in which members
of the public might use the Internet emphasize class distinctions that value certain social and
economic classes and taste cultures over others.

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Drawing on cultural studies understandings of media and class I trace the making of a
broadband upper class alongside the erasure of the experiences of a broadband underclass. In the
Kansas City region, there is an overlap between the urban underclass and the “broadband
underclass.” I categorize the broadband underclass as a socio-economic class of people who are
non-adopters of the Internet or who lack a consistent at home broadband connection. The urban
broadband underclass may not use the Internet at all, but more likely, these populations access
the Internet on mobile devices or at locations other than their home. Therefore, their experience
of using the Internet is routine, but also subpar, circumscribed, and peripatetic.
Through an analysis of marketing materials and demos, meetings and interviews with
broadband users and non-users, and the public and private spaces in which urban broadband
projects are implemented, I highlight specific and repeated instances of class-based constructions
of connectivity, mobility, and home and identify patterns of broadband adoption that are
encouraged by these representations.
Class and Classification
Social classes are structured by an unequal distribution or variations in access to economic,
social, and cultural capital. These groups are composed of people who share similar positions
and experiences within systems of economic and cultural production. Many scholars have
understood and analyzed class by focusing on the power and processes of classification and the
structures and the outcomes of these processes. Most notably, one of the outcomes of
classification are inscribed divisions. As Raymond Williams notes, since the Industrial
Revolution (if not before) “class” has been used as a term to delineate and distinguish groups of
people based on access to resources, power, and authority in economic as well as social terms.
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Processes of classification encode private or personal practices and preferences with
socio-economic position.
6
Taste preferences and aesthetic dispositions, culture and cultural
practices, knowledge and expertise are all “classified” and become indicators or signals of class
status. Furthermore, these taste preferences and cultural practices that are shared among
members of a social class are exhibited publicly in the form of aesthetic sensibilities or a
“lifestyle.” As other scholars have proposed, when a person talks about or marks their class, they
are symbolically expressing their experiences of power and prestige both past and present.
7
Or,
as Bourdieu explains in Distinction (1987), “Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier”.
8
For
example, Bourdieu proposes that the working class “taste for necessity” or appreciation of
“function over form” is exhibited in the objects, fashion, and art consumed by members of this
class, which simultaneously signal or mark people as conforming members of a particular class
(and the economic or cultural capital ascribed therein). Through everyday practices of
consumption – eating, dressing, choice of housing or décor, practices of leisure or entertainment
– a person is distinguished and distinguishable from members of other social classes.
Bourdieu’s focus on class fosters awareness of the cultural processes that systematically
marginalize, oppress, and codify social life. For example, symbolic power or symbolic violence
work to delineate and codify boundaries between different classes and naturalize or internalize
inequalities through social practices. According to E.P. Thompson, class “happens” through
human relations over time and is a contested and relational concept defined in association and
opposition to other social groups.
9
Class and processes of classifications are structured through
conflict and hierarchies of dominance which are evident in the labels commonly applied to social
classes: upper class, middle class, lower class with “ruling” or “dominant” classes at one end of
the spectrum and “working” classes on the opposing end. Similar to the hierarchical status

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inscribed in the labels assigned to different social classes, “lifestyles” or taste cultures are also
hierarchically ranked. While the definition of “legitimate culture” is perpetually contested, the
hierarchical status of certain lifestyles is codified based on their proximity or distance from the
legitimated culture of the moment.
10
Privileged classes or upper classes possess accumulations of capital and knowledge that
legitimate their social position within society, but also yield social power to discern and validate
who and what counts as culturally legitimate. Populations considered working class, working
poor or poor and those who Wilson describes as the “truly disadvantaged” are sometimes
referred to as “the underclass”.
11
The “underclass” or “urban underclass” have been classified by
structures and experiences of inequality, social exclusion, economic insecurity and disadvantage
due to discrimination, unemployment or underemployment, changing labor markets,
environmental and economic or social welfare conditions. More generally, the underclass is
defined as a class of people who are systematically excluded or have unequal access to
institutional and cultural resources, and where populations’ “constraints and opportunities” are
shaped by these structures and experiences.
12
In addition to commonly documented structures, policies, and social relations that shape
the urban upper and underclasses, I argue that we should also recognize the discourses,
materialities and implementation of urban broadband networks as structures that codify class
relations. As digital divide and digital inclusion research has shown, many populations
experience privilege or extreme marginalization from access to broadband infrastructures as well
as the economic, social, and technological systems that support these services. The remainder of
this chapter is an effort toward investigating the systems of opportunities and constraints that
influence and/or curb access and adoption of broadband systems among social classes and may

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determine which types of broadband networks these classes adopt. In addition, this chapter
illustrates the ways in which urban broadband networks are inflected with class encodings or
markers of class and simultaneously interpellate and exclude certain populations from
participating in broadband connectivity efforts.
Class and Urban Broadband Networks
Socio-economic class influences access to the Internet and the types of Internet access available
to certain populations. Studies have shown that low-income, marginalized, or socially excluded
populations are more likely to be disconnected or disconnect from Internet services.
13
The ability
to afford or willingness to pay for broadband access has continually been cited as a major
obstacle to broadband adoption and the persistence of digital divides. Along with education, race,
age, and geographic location, cost is seen as a reason for both non-adoption as well as un-
adoption of Internet and/or broadband access. Non-adopters or Internet “nevers” are typically
defined as people who have never had at-home broadband or Internet connection. These
populations are generally characterized as low-income communities who might rely on public
computer labs or public Wi-Fi (libraries, computer centers, school or work, commercial spaces,
etc.) or have mobile-only connections to the Internet.
14
According to recent studies, mobile
dependent or mobile-only Internet users tend to be minorities and lower-income groups with
lower education levels than other types of Internet users.
15
Although the number of households with broadband connection has exponentially
increased since the early 2000s, Whitacre and Rhinesmith note that “un-adopters” or those who
choose to discontinue at-home Internet service are likely to cite cost or unwillingness to pay as a
reason they disconnect.
16
The high-cost of broadband subscriptions and installation fees,

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hardware and equipment, and income fluctuations have been noted to impede broadband
adoption or continued use. However, cost or affordability is only one characteristic that may
influence demand. Although robust infrastructure exists and households may be able to pay for
broadband connection, there may still be a lack of demand or reluctance to sign up for broadband
connection. In addition, there may be social stigmas or social expectations about certain types of
Internet access. For example, Dailey et al. note that although some of their low-income
participants could afford dial-up connections they refused to sign up for this service because of
the reputation of dial-up within their social networks.
17
Clayton and Macdonald have noted how
socio-economic status and occupation shape perceptions of what technologies mean and how
they can be utilized to improve quality of life.
18
A 2010 FCC study found that along with cost
and relevance, digital literacy was also an intervening barrier to broadband adoption and use in
the US. As these cases indicate, pre-existing social positions, contexts, and cultural knowledge
not only shape decisions around Internet adoption, they also shape perceptions of relevance and
use.
One factor that has been emphasized in recent literature on digital inclusion is the
perceived “relevance” or “usefulness” of Internet access. Whitacre and Rhinesmith found that
along with cost, “no need” was a major factor in broadband non-adoption and un-adoption.
Relatedly, in a study for Pew Research Center, Horrigan found that 22% of non-Internet users
were “not interested in getting online” and categorized 50% of dial-up and non-Internet users as
questioning the “relevance” of at-home broadband Internet connection.
19
A Google conducted
survey with 3,219 Kansas City residents found “lack of relevance” to be a key factor in whether
households had Internet access at home (Google and Mayor’s Bi-State Innovation Team 2012).
In 2012 when low-income neighborhoods didn’t sign up for gigabit connection, a Google

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spokesperson stated that relevance was a major issue: “They don’t think they need it. They don’t
see why”.
20
While “relevance” might be interpreted as not understanding the value in adopting
Internet and broadband services or a lack of information about how the Internet is important in
daily life, studies have shown the opposite. Dailey et al found that low-income populations
understand the potential value of adopting broadband services and see these services as required
for socio-economic inclusion.
21
Clearly stated in the report, “No one needed to be convinced of
the importance of Internet use or the value of broadband adoption in the home”.
22
As access to
employment opportunities, government services, education, and communication exchanges move
online, the “relevance” of the Internet becomes increasingly obvious within social, economic,
and political contexts. More recent studies of broadband non-adoption also imply that there may
be other social or cultural factors that intervene in rationales and decision-making processes
around broadband adoption, non-adoption, and discontinued use that are in need of further
research and analysis.
In addition, the category of “non-use” or “non-adoption” is somewhat problematic when
applied to lower-income populations and other socio-economic groups. These categories often
specify non-use of fixed, at-home broadband connection. Several participants in the
aforementioned studies noted that they routinely used the Internet and had access to broadband
speeds through mobile devices (such as smartphones) or in places other than their homes
(friend’s house, community center, school or work, libraries, etc.). The category of “relevance”
is also ambiguous. While Pew Research studies have defined relevance as being “too busy,”
“uninterested in getting online,” and “nothing could get me to switch” to broadband, they also
note “other unspecified reasons.” When mapped onto Rogers’ five stages of technology adoption

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these findings imply that while people are aware of the benefits of Internet and broadband
access, non-adopters are stalled at versions of the “interest” and “evaluation” phases.
23
Class in Google Fiber
Google Fiber for Communities used a participatory model in order to identify neighborhoods and
households that qualified for Google Fiber. During an early phase of the Google Fiber initiative
in Kansas City, neighborhoods were asked to pre-register for services by paying a $10 sign-up
fee. Neighborhoods that met prescribed thresholds for household registrations would qualify for
Google Fiber installation and services. Areas with the most registrations would receive service
first. Class divisions became apparent in the maps and patterns of Google Fiber pre-registered
neighborhoods. The neighborhoods that qualified for Google Fiber service were composed of
middle to upper middle class, majority white residents who already had an Internet service
provider and/or broadband Internet access. The neighborhoods that didn’t qualify for service
through the pre-registration process were low-income with majority minority populations.
24
After the initial round of installation and sign-ups, Google made concerted efforts to
remove barriers for low-income communities and encourage more diverse populations to sign
up. In addition to canvassing low-income neighborhoods and working with community
organizers to spread information about low cost pricing plans, alternatives to credit card
payments, and services available, Google also subsidized connection for schools, community
centers, and housing projects. As a result, researchers have found that the geographic availability
of Google Fiber has since reached spatial equity.
25
Google Fiber infrastructure now permeates
many of the neighborhoods that did not previously qualify for installation during the initial
registration phase. In fact, Alizadeh et al found that although there were no major statistical
differences between infrastructure availability in renter versus owner-occupied residences they

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did find discrepancies in terms of demographics such as race, age, and income. In contrast to the
initial pre-registration period, neighborhoods with Google Fiber currently available for purchase
are younger, have larger minority populations and lower median incomes.
26
It is important to note that these statistics refer to availability of infrastructure and
potential service, not actual subscriptions or demographics of people who signed up for Google
Fiber services. A 2014 survey found that while Google Fiber became widely available in
previously excluded neighborhoods, only 10% of residents in the six low-income, majority
African-American neighborhoods surveyed actually subscribed to one of the tiered options for
Google Fiber services. An additional 5% signed up for a 5mbps download/1mbps upload option.
This slower speed option was free for seven years after paying a $300 installation fee (an option
that was discontinued in May 2016). This 15% of residents who subscribed to Google Fiber in
low-income neighborhoods pales in comparison to the 53% subscription rate of the majority
Caucasian, middle and higher income neighborhoods surveyed.
27
While some Kansas City residents cited the high cost of connection as reasons that they
didn’t sign up for Google Fiber service, other people I spoke with recognized a range of other
social and symbolic factors that signaled that the services weren’t targeted to them. Starting in
2012 I began attending Google Fiber promotional events as well as digital inclusion events,
meeting with digital inclusion activists, and observing computer training sessions in low-income
neighborhoods. I collected video and print marketing and promotional materials and visited
demo spaces, like the Google Fiber Space in the Westport neighborhood of Kansas City, MO. I
also attended signup and promotional events in Kansas City, KS and Kansas City, MO where

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representatives demonstrated Google Fiber products and encouraged residents to sign up for
gigabit services. Through these materials and events, I observed repeated instances of class-
based constructions of the type of Internet connection that Google Fiber offered and heard
residents speak about the ways in which these discursive constructions affected their
interpretation of what services Google was offering and for whom. In particular, discussions and
presentations of connectivity, mobility, and home signaled class hierarchies and marked Google
services and imagined audiences as fitting within hierarchical strata.
Connectivity
A 2012 introductory spot for Google Fiber showed a series of toy cars, a metaphor for
data packets, moving slowly through miniature city streets in the towns of “Dial-Up” and
“Broadband.” The flow of traffic was restricted by speed limit signs (56K, 10 mbps), halted by
railroad crossing barriers that read “Song Downloading,” stopped at traffic lights and blockades
that resembled buffering or modem connection icons. An instrumental version of The Cars song
“Just What I Needed” played in the background. Finally, the toy cars approach a sign that reads
“Welcome to Google Fiber” where the speed limit is 1000 mbps and cars speed through gravity
defying highway loops as the song crescendos and the tempo picks up. The ad ends with the
promise of a new chapter of Internet connection, 100 times faster than current speeds, and with
“100 times the possibilities.”
Google Fiber advertisements, promotional materials, and pitches to potential customers
emphasized gigabit connection speeds as the selling point of the network. The logo for Google

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Fiber, a primary colored rabbit, implied velocity. In print materials comparing Google Fiber to
cable, “Speed” was the heading listed before “Pricing” or “Availability.” Speed tests and
demonstrations were common practices at Google Fiber signup events and when I asked
representatives why I should sign up for Google Fiber, they presented a rehearsed pitch about
how the speed of the connection would improve the way I worked and accessed entertainment
services. They sometimes asked me what I did online and then emphasized download and upload
speeds, how frustrating it is to wait for access to content, and how buffering while streaming was
simply an unnecessary waste of my time. Promotional materials and representatives at sign-up
events explained how email attachments could be uploaded and downloaded in a fraction of a
second, large files accessed and exchanged in a blink, video and audio content and gaming
experiences streamed without interruption, and feature length films downloaded to devices in
seconds.
This carefully constructed message focused on speed and making what someone already
does online more efficient and less frustrating, which implies that Google Fiber was geared
toward long-time Internet users -- those who moved from dial-up to broadband and were now
ready for the “next chapter.” Or, in particular, users who already enjoyed some level of at-home
broadband Internet connection. In addition to high-speed connection, Google representatives also
pointed out that my subscription would come with 1 terabyte of cloud storage and HDTV
service. Representatives at sign-up events told me that their pitches changed when they entered
lower-income communities. They de-emphasized speed and focused more on the value of having
a stable Internet connection at home. While having a consistent, affordable Internet connection at
home echoed at least one of the pricing plans offered by Google Fiber, this tact was a derivation

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from the central promotional message of faster speeds improving quality of entertainment and
work life.
One striking feature of Google Fiber’s service was that it was a fixed gigabit service to
the home. This feature was commonly mentioned in discussions with low-income residents who
did not sign-up for service as well as Kansas-based digital inclusion activists. The fixity of the
service was seen as a limitation and something that signaled to lower-income populations that
Google Fiber was not targeted toward them and their communities. Mainly due to the fact that a
fixed, high-speed service exclusively connected to the home was read as “irrelevant” to
particular classes and communities of Internet users.
Mobility
Many people who have been categorized as “non-users” or “non-adopters” in studies of
Internet adoption tend to access the Internet from a mobile device or from a location other than
their place of residence. Google Fiber services offered customers fixed gigabit services to their
homes. In advertisements and demonstrations, Google Fiber services were used to power home
theaters or stationary entertainment systems at the center of a suburban or spacious living room.
The gigabit connection was restricted to the space of the domicile (and as many posts to online
forums indicate, the service doesn’t always work well within the home). Any tablet or laptops on
display might be used in other parts of the house or individual apartment where Google Fiber
was installed. This implied that Google Fiber users lived in multi-bedroom residences, had more

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than one device that needed to be connected to the Internet, or more than one Internet user within
the household.
These images work against the needs and experiences of many low-income Internet users
and contradict some of their pre-existing relationships to urban place. Google Fiber focused their
implementation model on high-speed connection anchored to a physical space called home.
However, for many urban residents it is not uncommon for their residence to change yearly or
several times throughout the year. I spoke with several renters who said that it would be a foolish
investment to pay for a service that could not move with them when their lease expired. Other
potential customers noted that the $300 installation fee and extremely delayed installation
appointments signaled that this service was for someone who was making a long- term
investment in a particular location and was prepared to stay in their home for years after
registration. In addition, images or mention of apartment buildings in Google’s promotional
materials and implementation plans were initially absent. This absence indicated that Google did
not consider diverse experiences and connections to “home” within urban spaces.
Some of the lower income parents I spoke with mentioned that they relocated their
families more than once throughout a given school year. These parents confidently stated that
their children would benefit from having access to a stable Internet connection for schoolwork
and educational purposes. However, their children did not always complete their homework at
home. Participants that maintained a mobile sense of home noted that they relied on
smartphones, Wi-Fi hotspots outside of the home, and institutionalized broadband connections in
order to use the Internet. Parents’ work schedules often meant that students would stay with a

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variety of friends or family members after school, or attend afterschool programs at community
centers, libraries, churches, or meet up with other students at the neighborhood McDonald’s. A
stationary, high-speed Internet connection became irrelevant for parents who cared for children
who completed their homework at several different venues during the week. The parents and
teachers I spoke with readily recognized that a more mobile and affordable internet connection
overlapped with the daily travel patterns of many public school students and the adults who
cared for them. In Google’s broadband plans and service options, high-speed networks were
linked to private domestic space rather than public spaces or circulating bodies.
Home
People of color and low-income Americans have historically had a difficult, costly, and
precarious relationship with homeownership due to social and economic discrimination. There
has been a housing wealth gap in the United States for decades, with African-Americans and
Hispanics having lower homeownership rates than Whites, partially due to a series of
discriminatory lending policies and housing markets.
28
As a result, members of the American
working class and underclass and people of color are far more likely to rent than to own a home.
These demographics apply to the Kansas City region as well. As reported by the Mid-
America Regional Council (MARC) in 2016, people of color and single parent households are
more likely to rent housing units rather than own a home.
29
In addition, MARC found that high
housing cost burden -- paying more than 30% of income on housing -- was nearly twice as
frequent among renters than homeowners indicating that people of color are also more likely to

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face high housing cost burdens. The percentages of people of color and single parent households
that rent an apartment or home in Kansas City, MO are significantly higher than in the region as
a whole. In addition, residential loan denial rates were significantly higher (approximately
double) for African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans in Kansas City in 2010 as
compared to Whites.
30
Aside from a primary-colored rabbit, a series of houses that were linked via brightly
colored underground cables was often used to advertise Google’s gigabit network . These houses
were nearly identical in size and shape and resembled the single-family homes and landscaping
found in the middle class or affluent areas of KCK and KCMO.
Google Fiber for Communities sign in Kansas City. Image from Sean
Ludwig/VentureBeat http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/08/gig-u-yanks-press-release-
congratulating-austin-on-google-fiber/

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This iconography presented particular ideologies of home and household. The images
evoked private, single-family homes that were presumably owned not rented, in a moderately
dense neighborhood surrounded by picket fences and individual Internet connections. These
simple signs conjured an image of the types of users who were signing up for the service and
characteristics and style of the places they reside. While household and home were equated in
Google’s campaign, Kansas City residents who resided in the inner city, particularly residents
who had never been connected to the Internet, understood that an investment in your household
did not necessarily mean an investment in the physical space called home.
Images of home and household as self-contained and self-sufficient units evoked a sense
of individualism that was evident in Google’s implementation and service plan as well.
According to Google Fiber policies registrants were allowed only one connection per household.
Communal or shared living conditions such as apartment buildings, the landlords who owned
them, and the management companies became cumbersome within Google’s implementation
model and excluded residents who might have wanted to sign up. According to Google’s original
implementation plan, the landlord of an apartment building would have to take the initiative to
pre-register for Google Fiber service and would be required to pay the registration and flat rate
service fee ($300) for each apartment unit. Michael Liimatta the co-founder of the Kansas City
nonprofit Connecting for Good from 2011-2016, emphasized that the dependence of a large
portion of poor and working class households on landlord owned housing meant that "literally
tens of thousands of families who may have wanted to subscribe were never given the chance".
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Creating Class Distinctions in Urban Broadband Projects

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Napoli and Obar note that the differences and inadequacies between mobile-only Internet
use and fixed broadband create a “mobile Internet underclass”.
32
By categorizing mobile-only
Internet users as an “underclass,” Napoli and Obar recognize disparities in access to web content,
cultural and economic resources based on the device and platforms used to access the Internet.
The reality that certain populations are systematically excluded from or unable to utilize the
institutional and cultural resources provided by at-home broadband services, and where
“constraints and opportunities” are shaped by this unequal access applies beyond the use of
particular platforms or devices.
Scholars have expanded Bourdieu’s notion of distinction to extend to knowledge, access,
and use of technology including distinctions based on “technological capital” and digital literacy,
the types of technologies or speed of Internet connections utilized, and the ways in which digital
technologies are incorporated into everyday social relations.
33
More recent studies of non-use
and discontinued use have recognized that personal and cultural attitudes and perceptions of
technologies influence technology adoption. Biases within social networks, past experiences, or
norms about appropriate technology use might influence what types of Internet access or Internet
service provision are adopted within social classes. In Clayton and Macdonald’s (2013) study of
Internet adoption patterns among marginalized social groups, they find that populations struggle
to integrate what is understood to be “appropriate use” of technology into their everyday lives,
especially when these populations don’t dictate what counts as appropriate or “useful”.
34
The
authors conclude that the boundaries between higher and lower classes and perceptions of
technologies reiterated within these classes, impact lower class ability to use digital technologies

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as a means of social mobility. In some cases, use of digital technologies by members of the urban
underclass has been shown to reinforce previous social positions and social networks.
The visual, aesthetic, and rhetorical signs described in previous sections of this chapter,
inscribe the idea that certain populations are underprivileged or part of a broadband underclass
by linking high-speed, new, and improved Internet connection with upper class objects,
activities, and lifestyles, while excluding other relationships and experiences of Internet access.
Google’s outreach campaigns and pitches to low-income neighborhoods highlighted the fact that
the urban underclass did not sign up for service and suggested that it was because they were
information poor in terms of importance or relevance of Google Fiber connection. As Hersberger
observed in regard to homeless populations, it is not having access to information about services
and resources that is the issue but acting on the information obtained because it does not coincide
with one’s social context.
35
An analysis of Google Fiber is one example where the inability to act
on the services being offered not only because of cost, but because of a disjuncture between pre-
existing relationships to home, connection, and mobility contributed to the making of a
broadband underclass.
Differential access to resources, authority to express alternative desires and appropriate
forms of broadband use, and pre-existing social inequities codified boundaries of taste and
distinction and marginalized populations that didn't fit the at-home gigabit service mold. Internet
service provision pricing plans tend to map class structures onto Internet access and Google
Fiber was no different, offering Gigabit Internet + TV ($130/month), Gigabit Internet
($70/month), and Basic Internet ($0/month + $300 construction fee for less than gigabit service).

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Within this hierarchy, users who relied on mobile-only, public computing centers, school or
work, commercial spaces or other workarounds for Internet access or broadband speeds occupied
the lowest status of Internet user. So much so, that alternate or emerging understanding of home,
connectivity, and mobility that overlap with experiences of the urban underclasses were not
designed or imagined within the Google Fiber universe. As the pricing plans indicate, cost and
not differential experiences of mobility or homeownership were considered as barriers that could
be overcome through Google’s adjustments.
Kansas City residents were being class-ified based on the places and types of access to
broadband they utilized, and these classifications were encoded and reiterated in campaigns to
“reach” universal audiences and bridge digital divides. Through the services offered, pricing
plans, rhetorical and discursive constructions of lifestyle and fixed gigabit connection, Google
Fiber’s campaign made class divisions more apparent by hailing populations based on the
relevance of certain types of Internet connection and relationships to home. The ability to acquire
and to use fixed broadband service at home became a signal of class status and was supported by
the images of home and community in the Google campaigns, demo spaces, sign-up events and
sign-up pitches.
There is a contradiction between the idea that Google Fiber is for “everyone” or for all of
Kansas City and the representations of home, connectivity, and mobility being used to sell the
gigabit network. Google’s urban broadband initiatives coincide with the perspective promoted in
broadband adoption reports and measurements that privilege at home access to high-speed
Internet as a form of social and economic mobility. While at home broadband access is one way

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to address digital divides and may lead to social mobility and increased digital literacy, fixed
broadband initiatives may simultaneously classify groups of people as fixed within class-based
structures. Through efforts to make at home high-speed connection more accessible, these
initiatives exposed the ways in which social and economic contexts of the broadband underclass
may make technological capital and access to gigabit service at home difficult or untenable.
Conclusion
Cultural processes are central to classification and the creation of class-based distinctions.
Through the aesthetics and promotional materials utilized in Google Fiber campaigns, Google
created and reinforced a class-based system for broadband use. The social contexts and practices
around Internet use among marginalized socio-economic populations contrasted with the images
and assumptions about Internet use in Google Fiber campaigns. Google Fiber entered a
marketplace and environment where low-income populations had limited choices for stable and
affordable broadband connections. Through the company’s sales pitches, advertising materials,
and discursive construction of gigabit networks they erased the experiences of a broadband
underclass by constructing high-speed broadband access as simultaneously accessible, but also as
a mark of privilege.
The way that Google Fiber conceptualized gigabit connection in its initial service
offerings and advertising campaigns represented ideologies and aesthetics that distinguished
different classes of Internet users and constructed some users and uses as “appropriate” over
others. Google Fiber for Communities reduced appropriate Internet connection to a particular

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type of connection (high-speed, at-home broadband) and initially essentialized some of the
reasons for lack of Internet connection at home (cost and information poverty). Google Fiber
promotional campaigns and services privileged at home Internet access as the only type of
meaningful Internet access for urban populations. And if populations can’t acquire or act on this
type of connection, then they are truly disadvantaged or increasingly disengaged from
technological progress and upward mobility.
The type and speed of Internet access enjoyed by a particular socio-economic group does
not just indicate distinction or social position but is linked to other social contexts experienced
by that group. Although urban broadband initiatives often work toward digital inclusion by
offering low-cost pricing options, there needs to be an enriched understanding of cultures of
poverty and how experiences of the urban underclasses intersect with digital media access,
experience and use. Experiences of mobility, home, and connectivity are not only connected to
cultures and poverty but to digital media as well. In order to construct more equitable methods
for designing and advertising urban broadband networks, companies need to recognize
intersectional experiences of place, poverty, and digital media. This case study highlights some
of the ways that social and material experiences of class (beyond cost) intersect with broadband
adoption or the adoption of certain types of broadband services over others.
From the perspective of place and space, digital inclusion is not just about being and
feeling included in the segment of the population that is connected to the Internet but being and
feeling included in the places and spaces where digital technologies and Internet connection are
being used, taught, and talked about. Where conversations and decisions about digital

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infrastructure and what they mean for communities are being discussed. As this chapter has
demonstrated, urban broadband network campaigns and services construct and reify distinctions
between urban broadband underclasses and more privileged classes of Internet users. Further
research into urban broadband networks could continue to investigate how other intersectional
distinctions and differential mobilities are assumed and designed into advertising campaigns,
service plans, and policies of network implementation. Researchers should continue to look at
the ways that emerging, high-speed services are contextualized and how they differ from urban
underclass experiences of place and technology in significant ways that might create obstacles to
adopting broadband access at home or at all.
!
Notes
1
Jane M Jacobs and Susan J Smith, “Living Room: Rematerialising Home,” Environment and
Planning A 40, no. 3 (March 2008): 515–19.
2
Enrica Amaturo, Simonetta Costagliola, and Gerardo Ragone, “Furnishing and Status
Attributes: A Sociological Study of the Living Room,” Environment and Behavior 19, no. 2
(March 1987): 228–49.
3
Jon Cook, “Culture, Class and Taste,” in Cultural Studies and the Working Class, ed. Sally R.
Munt (London: Cassell, 2000), 97–112.
4
Annemarie Money, “Material Culture and the Living Room: The Appropriation and Use of
Goods in Everyday Life,” Journal of Consumer Culture 7, no. 3 (2007): 355–77.
5
Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press, 1976).
6
Mike Savage, “Culture, Class and Classification,” in The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Analysis
(London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2008), 481.
7
Martin Bulmer, ed., Working-Class Images of Society (Routledge, 2016).
8
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1987), 6.
9
E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1966).
10
Elliot B. Weininger, “Foundations of Pierre Bourdieu’s Class Analysis,” in Approaches to
Class Analysis, ed. Erik Olin Wright (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 82–
118.
11
William Julius Wilson, The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public
Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
12
Wilson.
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13
John Clayton and Stephen J. Macdonald, “The Limits of Technology,” Information,
Communication & Society 16, no. 6 (2013).
14
A. Smith, “Record Shares of Americans Now Own Smartphones, Have Home Broadband,”
Pew Research, 2017, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/12/evolution-of-
technology/.
15
Eric Tsetsi and Stephen A. Rains, “Smartphone Internet Access and Use: Extending the Digital
Divide and Usage Gap,” Mobile Media & Communication 5, no. 3 (September 1, 2017): 239–55.
16
Brian Whitacre and Colin Rhinesmith, “Broadband Un-Adopters,” Telecommunications Policy
40, no. 1 (February 2016): 1–13.
17
Dharma Dailey et al., “Broadband Adoption in Low-Income Communities” (Social Science
Research Council, 2010), https://www.ssrc.org/publications/view/1EB76F62-C720-DF11-9D32-
001CC477EC70/.
18
Clayton and Macdonald, “The Limits of Technology.”
19
John B. Horrigan, “Home Broadband Adoption 2009,” Pew Research Center: Internet,
Science & Tech (blog), June 17, 2009, http://www.pewinternet.org/2009/06/17/home-broadband-
adoption-2009/.
20
Marcus Wohlsen, “Google Fiber Splits Along Kansas City’s Digital Divide,” WIRED,
September 7, 2012, https://www.wired.com/2012/09/google-fiber-digital-divide/.
21
Dailey et al., “Broadband Adoption in Low-Income Communities.”
22
Dailey et al., 15.
23
E.M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations, 5th edition (New York, N.Y.: Free Press, 2003).
24
Germaine Halegoua, “Calling All ‘Fiberhoods’: Google Fiber and the Politics of Visibility,”
International Journal of Cultural Studies 18, no. 3 (2014): 311–16.
25
Tooran Alizadeh, Tony H. Grubesic, and Edward Helderop, “Urban Governance and Big
Corporations in the Digital Economy: An Investigation of Socio-Spatial Implications of Google
Fiber in Kansas City,” Telematics and Informatics 34, no. 7 (November 2017): 973–86.
26
Alizadeh, Grubesic, and Helderop.
27
Alistair Barr, “Google Fiber Leaves a Digital Divide; Survey Finds Few Low-Income
Residents in Kansas City Subscribe to Superfast Service,” Wall Street Journal (Online); New
York, N.Y., October 2, 2014, sec. Tech.
28
Mechele Dickerson, Homeownership and America’s Financial Underclass: Flawed Premises,
Broken Promises, New Prescriptions (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 14.
29
Mid-America Regional Council, “Plan for Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” (Kansas
City, MO: Mid-America Regional Council, October 2016), http://www.marc.org/Regional-
Planning/Housing/Related-Projects/Affirmatively-Furthering-Fair-Housing-Assessment.
30
Mid-America Regional Council.
31
Nancy Scola, “In Kansas City, Few Poor People, Renters Sign up for Google Fiber,” The
Washington Post, October 6, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2014/10/06/in-kansas-city-few-poor-people-renters-sign-up-for-google-fiber/.
32
Philip M. Napoli and Jonathan A. Obar, “The Emerging Mobile Internet Underclass: A
Critique of Mobile Internet Access,” The Information Society 30, no. 5 (October 20, 2014): 323–
34.
33
Amy Gonzales, “The Contemporary US Digital Divide: From Initial Access to Technology
Maintenance,” Information, Communication & Society 19, no. 2 (2016): 234–48.
34
Clayton and Macdonald, “The Limits of Technology,” 949.

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35
J. Hersberger, “Are the Economically Poor Information Poor? Does the Digital Divide Affect
the Homeless and Access to Information?,” Canadian Journal of Information & Library
Sciences 27, no. 3 (September 2002): 45–63.