Research

As social media and technology companies face criticism for not doing enough to stem the flow of misleading information on their platforms, a sizable portion of Americans continue to turn to these sites for news. A little under half (48%) of U.S.

With the transition of millions of children and post-secondary students to online-based emergency remote teaching and the widespread need for online telecommuting, the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need for nationwide reliable broadband access. A fixed, landline Internet connection is critical not only for education, but also for locating and applying for a job, working remotely, and partaking in telemedicine treatments.

The Federal Trade Commission made public the findings from its inquiry into past acquisitions by the largest technology platforms’ that did not require reporting to antitrust authorities at the FTC and the Department of Justice. The inquiry analyzed the terms, scope, structure, and purpose of these exempted transactions under the Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act and the FTC's reporting requirements by Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2019. These companies comprise the top five US companies by market capitalization.

New York State has made great progress building broadband infrastructure and ranks second in the country for the share of population with access to basic broadband speeds. However, there are still over 250,000 New Yorkers for whom broadband service is unavailable in their neighborhood, and even more for whom broadband is unavailable in their home or place of business.

The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Universal Service Fund (USF or Fund) has been one of the nation’s most important tools for connecting our nation, including rural communities, low-income families, schools, libraries, and rural health care facilities. However, the funding mechanism that supports the Fund is under significant duress. The “contribution base” – the revenues used to calculate USF contributions – has declined 63% in the last two decades, from $79.9 billion in 2001 to $29.6 billion in 2021.

Research indicates that people living in rural areas struggle to obtain broadband connections mainly because of the low density of housing. Fewer people living in a community, especially over large swaths of land, translates into higher costs to build and maintain the most common broadband technologies. This white paper on the rural broadband industry was researched and written by Doug Dawson, President of CCG Consulting, a telecommunications consulting firm that works with rural communities and providers.

The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC)'s policy team came together to attempt to uncover the real impact of the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) program for eligible Latinx households. The NHMC conducted their analysis using 11 states chosen based on their significant Latinx populations: Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas. The NHMC published their findings along with recommendations for federal agencies to boost Latinx enrollment in broadband subsidy programs. Major findings include:

The radio spectrum that governments license to mobile operators is central to the development of mobile broadband services. However, there is significant variation around how much and when spectrum is assigned, as well as its costs. We assessed whether policies to assign spectrum had an impact on consumer welfare in 64 countries during the 2010–2017 period and found evidence that policies that reduce the amount of spectrum available to operators, delay the assignment of spectrum and increase the cost of spectrum all impacted two important consumer outcomes - network coverage and quality.

Online businesses and platform work can create the impression that the digital economy is ephemeral and placeless. But the digital economy is experienced locally, and its effects are spatial. Measuring them requires better community-level data on economic activities online. While new government data measures broadband subscriptions down to neighborhoods, existing public data do not measure how broadband is used in local communities, and whether this digital activity affects economic outcomes.

Results from a new survey of US adults reveal the extent to which people’s use of the internet has changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, their views about how helpful technology has been for them and the struggles some have faced. The vast majority of adults (90%) say the internet has been at least important to them personally during the pandemic, the survey finds. The share who say it has been essential – 58% – is up slightly from 53% in April 2020.