George Ford

The National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA)'s Internet Use Survey of November 2021 confirms what the data has said in the past: the digital divide is predominantly a problem of a lack of interest, not affordability, at least with respect to adoption. Affordability is not the dominant driver of non-adoption, a result spanning many years. Also, as adoption rises over time, a lack of interest will increasingly explain non-adoption and price less so. This result comports with economic reasoning.

This report by George Ford at the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies compares fixed broadband speeds in US cities to speeds in cities in other, higher-income nations. The data include fixed broadband speeds for 4,480 cities across the globe (910 in the US) from 98 nations. Across multiple comparisons, the report finds that the US has equal or higher download speeds—often much higher—than do other comparator countries.

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.