Comcast's biggest “tool of persuasion” with regulators weighing the Time Warner merger is the Internet Essentials program, which promises to extend low-cost Internet access to some people who can't afford full prices, writes broadband policy expert Susan Crawford on Medium. But the program, which is only for families with school-age children, “does nothing to close the digital divide for other underserved groups like the elderly, the disabled, and low-income childless adults,” she writes.