Sascha Meinrath

The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) provides $42.45 billion in grant funding to states via the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment Program (BEAD). IIJA also underscores that any state receiving these funds may not exclude local governments from applying to use these funds to build their own broadband networks.

Unlike other advertisements for goods and services, there are no federally set standards for measuring broadband service speeds. This means there is no clear way to tell whether customers are getting what they pay for. To protect consumers, the FCC will need to invest in building a set of broadband speed measures, maps, and public data repositories that enables researchers to access and analyze what the public actually experiences when people purchase broadband connectivity.

This year-long research project surveyed rural and urban Pennsylvanians about their willingness to pay for high-speed broadband service. It provides a unique first look into factors that continue to create substantial barriers to closing the digital divide. The researchers surveyed 1,446 Pennsylvania residents in May and June 2020. They used a hybrid telephone/SMS (short message service, or “text messaging”) survey that asked respondents about the type of internet technology available to them, broadband pricing, and willingness to pay for 25 Megabits per second (Mbps) broadband.

To put it bluntly, our internet is breaking. And it’s not breaking equitably. During the last half of February 2020, our research shows that 1,708 counties (52.8 percent) in the U.S. had median download speeds that did not meet the Federal Communication Commission’s minimum criteria to qualify as “broadband” connectivity. By the last two weeks of March 2020 (following widespread shelter-in-place orders across the U.S.), we found that the number of counties that did not meet the FCC’s minimum criteria for broadband speed had increased to 2,012 (62.2 percent).

[Commentary] As the US continues to debate whether to embrace internet freedom, the world is doing so already, with many countries imposing even stronger rules than the ones the Federal Communications Commission did away with. Other countries are facing similar dilemmas about how to deal with today’s digital realities, and are slowly and individually contributing to a patchwork of laws that differ from country to country.

[Commentary] Hillary Clinton's tech agenda doesn't address the most pressing digital issues. The US deserves a tech platform that defends privacy, protects the public from discriminatory algorithms, and ensures that innovation doesn't just benefit the wealthy. This tech platform is designed around the best interests of the general public – it is time to bring technology under the control of the people it was meant to serve, not the 1 percent who seek to use it to further exploit the unsuspecting and enrich themselves.

1. Glide paths for the sharing economy
2. Digital feudalism, algorithmic discrimination, and financial inclusion
3. Open curricula for education
4. Universal broadband and truth in telecom advertising
5. Micro-generation and smart grids
6. User control over user data and data collection protections
7. Open technology for all public investments
8. Lay the groundwork for intelligent transportation
9. Open standards for health IT and patient access to data
10. Make the US CTO a cabinet-level appointment

[Meinrath is the Palmer Chair in Telecommunications at Penn State and director of X-Lab]