Research

Fast, reliable internet service has become essential for everything from getting news to finding a job. But 24% of rural adults say access to high-speed internet is a major problem in their local community, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted earlier in 2018. An additional 34% of rural residents see this as a minor problem, meaning that roughly six-in-ten rural Americans (58%) believe access to high speed internet is a problem in their area.

About two-thirds of American adults (68%) say they at least occasionally get news on social media, about the same share as at this time in 2017, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Many of these consumers, however, are skeptical of the information they see there: A majority (57%) say they expect the news they see on social media to be largely inaccurate. Still, most social media news consumers say getting news this way has made little difference in their understanding of current events, and more say it has helped than confused them (36% compared with 15%).

This survey is the second wave of an ongoing study tracking social media use among American teenagers: how often they use social media such as Instagram, Snapchat, or Facebook; their attitudes about social media’s role in their lives; experiences they have on social media; and how social media makes them feel. As such, it offers a unique opportunity to observe changes in social media use over time, and to deepen our understanding of the role of social media in teens’ lives. Some key findings:

In a paper commissioned by NTCA – The Rural Broadband Association and USTelecom, the authors examine communications networks, road networks, and electric power networks as three key network infrastructure industries; and the resulting vulnerability in low-density rural areas with the highest need for targeted subsidies. By the very nature of network economics, each industry exhibits economies of density and each reaches a point at which un-subsidized provision of service in low-density areas is not viable.

The Government Accountability Office was asked to review the Federal Communications Commission's efforts to collect broadband data for tribal lands. This report examines the extent to which: (1) FCC's approach to collecting broadband data accurately captures broadband access on tribal lands and (2) FCC obtains tribal input on the data.

Significant shares of Facebook users have taken steps in the past year to reframe their relationship with the social media platform. Just over half of Facebook users ages 18 and older (54%) say they have adjusted their privacy settings in the past 12 months. Around four-in-ten (42%) say they have taken a break from checking the platform for a period of several weeks or more, while around a quarter (26%) say they have deleted the Facebook app from their cellphone. All told, some 74% of Facebook users say they have taken at least one of these three actions in the past year.

Notable shares of Facebook users ages 18 and older lack a clear understanding of how the site’s news feed operates, feel ordinary users have little control over what appears there, and have not actively tried to influence the content the feed delivers to them. When asked whether they understand why certain posts but not others are included in their news feed, around half of US adults who use Facebook (53%) say they do not – with 20% saying they do not understand the feed at all well.

As international agreements come under fire from current politics, it becomes ever more important to investigate the effect of such agreements. The telecommunication sector is of special interest due to its growing importance in the digital age. International law came into play in 1998 when the Agreement on Basic Telecommunications (BTA) entered into force. It demanded far-reaching liberalization reforms and was signed and ratified by 66 countries. A difference-in-differences estimator is used to analyze if the treaty had an impact on investments in telecommunications.

This paper considers whether common national standards for determining participants' eligibility and designating service providers in the Lifeline program are preferable to a decentralized system where state utility commissions have greater influence over these program parameters. Two recent decisions of the Federal Communications Commission, a 2016 Order and its reversal in March 2017, on the designation of Eligible Telecommunications Carriers to provide broadband Lifeline service, centered on this question.

Corning filed a report at the Federal Communications Commission on August 29, 2018, entitled “Assessing the Impact of Removing Regulatory Barriers on Next Generation Wireless and Wireline Broadband Infrastructure Investment: Annex 2, 5G Attachment and Application Fee Scenarios.” Corning said this report supplements previous reports it has submitted and finds that reducing small cell attachment and application fees could reduce deployment costs by $2.1 billion over five years, or $7,900 per small cell built.