For many families, highspeed internet helped them to weather the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing students to study from home, their parents to continue to work, and connecting them to doctors, friends, family members and community.

While we know there have been countless stories of success — of people thriving, businesses growing, and new ways of working being discovered — there are unfortunately also millions of Americans who have been without this necessity.

In Maine where 15% of households do not have connection to high-speed internet, there are three causes: access, affordability and adoption.

Access refers to communities that don’t have the ability to interact with the infrastructure that would allow them to connect to high-speed internet. Access issues primarily impacts rural communities.

Affordability refers to those who don’t have the financial means to afford a subscription to highspeed internet. Adoption refers to folks who aren’t online because they lack the experience to get online or do not think it’s something they need to do.

Closing the digital divide requires understanding the issues at play in different communities.

For example, for the 3% of Maine households that lack access to broadband infrastructure, officials and existing service providers should work together to bring access to every Mainer and do it quickly.

In much of our state, the primary causes of the digital divide are not infrastructure.

According to the FCC, in Mid- Maine Chamber of Commerce’s geographic region, about 99.9% of Kennebec County has access to three or more high-speed internet providers, while Waldo County and Somerset County are at 94% and 98% for that same figure, respectively.

Fortunately, thanks to the recently passed bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, significant federal funding has been allocated toward initiatives to address the affordability and adoption gap.

The new law established the Affordable Connectivity Program, a promising initiative that will provide up to a $30 monthly benefit for families at 200% of the poverty level, which will allow them to afford a broadband subscription more easily.

Almost one in every four Mainers (23%) are eligible for the program, indicating that the state should continue its efforts to make sure people know about the benefit, as it has already begun doing through ConnectMaine, a state agency that has acted as an informational hub on how to increase broadband connectivity in communities.

There is still significant work that can be done to promote the program. According to enrollment figures, only about 10% of eligible Mainers have signed up.

To tackle to the adoption gap, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act also allocated $2.75 billion in grant-funding for programs to increase adoption, which primarily affects older and low-income Americans, through educating impacted communities about the necessary digital skills to get online, in addition to the mechanisms that will get them online affordably.

There is significant federal funding that will allow our state to help close the digital divide, but some in Maine have instead focused on an alternative, ill-advised option that would do little to fix the problem — taxpayer-funded, broadband networks that would be maintained and operated by municipalities.

This option not only takes years to complete, and hijacks funding that could be used to address other pressing problems, but also would put a minimal dent in Maine’s digital divide, as it fails to prioritize unserved communities, and does nothing to address affordability and adoption issues.

We already have the solutions at our disposal to address Maine’s digital divide.

Instead of waiting for an expensive, years-long project that will not deal with the problem, we need to increase awareness about the federally funded tools at our disposal. We also need to prioritize bringing broadband infrastructure to Mainers without access.

There is no time to waste when it comes to connecting our communities. The longer we wait, the further they fall behind.

Kimberly N. Lindlof is president and CEO of the Mid-Maine Chamber of Commerce and executive director of the Central Maine Growth Council.