George Ford

Faced with the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2021, Congress aimed to help low-income Americans remain connected by providing up to a $50 monthly subsidy for Internet connections through the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) Program. Now, as the Federal Communications Commission prepares rules for the EBB Program’s longer-term replacement—the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) established by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act—it is worth studying the EBB Program in search of guidance for the ACP. Analysis by Dr.

In a new analysis entitled A Quality Check on Form 477 Data: Errors, Subsidies, and Econometrics, Phoenix Center Chief Economist Dr. George Ford compares Federal Communications Commission Form 477 data to the State of Georgia's broadband availability survey data to make several interesting findings:

With data from the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey, we estimate the effect of a large-scale, government-owned broadband network in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on labor market outcomes. Difference-in-Differences, augmented with Coarsened Exact Matching, is used to estimate the causal effect of the network across nine labor market outcomes. We find no economically- nor statistically-significant effect on the labor market from the city's broadband investments.

The Biden Administration and the U.S. Congress are contemplating spending tens of billions of dollars on policy interventions to increase the deployment of broadband networks with the objective of increasing broadband adoption.

As governments push for universal adoption of broadband Internet service, policies must address the fact that many households with access to the service do not to subscribe to it. Lower adoption rates in some minority communities are one cause for concern. A confounding factor with respect to race is that it is often correlated with income, education, and other factors that drive Internet adoption in the home.

Respecting the limitations of the speed-test data, I analyze a sample of over 100 million speed-tests conducted in the US in 2020. Through its Open Data Initiative, the data are made available by Ookla (speedtest.net). I also link the Ookla Speedtest data to the Federal Communications Commission’s Form 477 data for comparison purposes.

Advocates for municipal broadband are, if anything, persistent.

According the latest Census data on computer and Internet use, 85.7% of Americans have fixed-line broadband service in the home. But during the COVID pandemic, it is the 14.3% of broadband “have nots” getting all the attention.

America has spent billions trying to close the Digital Divide, but adoption disparities along many dimensions persist. The COVID pandemic has rekindled the strong interest in broadband adoption, with many in Congress now proposing to spend billions more to shrink the adoption gap. As might be expected, the Phoenix Center’s economic analysis prescribes that money should be spent where it is most effective (per dollar) at increasing adoption.

COVID-19 has forced the residents of many nations to shelter-in-place, either by choice or by mandate. As a result, Internet use has skyrocketed, putting stress on both fixed and mobile broadband networks. An early look at the performance of broadband networks with respect to download speeds. Using weekly speed data for fixed and mobile networks for months preceding and following March 2020, Ford finds sizable reductions in speed for several countries, but also some increases in speed.