Research

This guide offers an overview of federal funding options that could provide financial support to Tribal, state, and local governments and utilities in their efforts to expand broadband infrastructure. Varying dramatically in size, these funding opportunities target a wide variety of deployment scenarios and end users. The programs encompass infrastructure buildout, service subsidies, and technical planning assistance. This guide provides information on a range of funding opportunities—most of which are currently open, but some of which may be awaiting future funding.

There is no shortage of options for immediate and long-term funding for K-12 home connectivity solutions.

FOR LONG TERM K-12 FUNDING:

Unequal access to broadband Internet threatens to undermine the ability of Americans to participate in their economy, their communities, and in their democracy. Without change in this regard, the country will have a difficult time rebuilding after the coronavirus pandemic, especially when confronting long-standing shortfalls in economic fairness and social justice. At a time when the nation faces a crisis of commitment to social and physical infrastructure, access to broadband carries the potential to create opportunities for individuals and communities.

This report provides a basic overview of broadband and then dives into the service as it relates to: 1) remote learning, 2) working from home, 3) telehealth, 4) business and consumers, and 5) social connections, exploring how the pandemic has impacted each sector. It also looks at the impact the pandemic has had on broadband networks and the companies that are building service into rural America. Finally, a look at issues such as the technologies used to provide broadband and policy reforms that could impact the future of broadband deployment.

According to a new Morning Consult poll, 27 percent of Black, Hispanic and other non-white adults who make less than $50,000 annually said they have missed at least one internet bill payment since January 2020, when the COVID-19 outbreak started spreading in the United States, compared to 16 percent of lower-income white adults.

Within the growing literature on broadband development, much research has focused on infrastructure competition and spatial effects driving investment incentives in broadband provision. However, less attention has been paid to the geographical factors explaining very high capacity fibre based network rollout.

In the fall and winter of 2020, New America embarked on a snapshot study to gather data on how—or if—people were discovering, accessing, and using their public libraries during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on materials that libraries made available online. Our findings, which include data from a national survey of 2,620 people, highlight the need for more inclusivity, more focus on providing internet access, and more awareness-raising initiatives with local organizations and schools.

More than 12 million US households have cancelled their home broadband service and use only mobile broadband for their internet needs. There are more than 15 million households in the US that have only a mobile broadband service, which includes more than three million households that have never had a home internet subscription. “High cost is the most prominent issue driving households to cut the cord and go mobile only, although service-related issues, from slow speeds to poor customer experience, also contribute,” said Kristen Hanich, Senior Analyst, Parks Associates.

This 2019 Digital Divide Index (DDI) is an updated version that scores: the overall digital divide index, infrastructure/adoption, and socioeconomic. For purposes of this post, we divided all census tracts in the country, whose DDI could be calculated, into three equal groups (roughly same number of tracts per group) based on their DDI score: low, medium, and high. Of the roughly 324 million residents in the U.S.

We evaluate the impact of mobile operator mergers on the unit price of data and voice by using country-level observations on retail revenue for data, cellular data traffic, retail revenue for voice, and outgoing voice minutes. Using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, we estimate the effect of operator merger by comparing the difference between the non-merging countries and the merging countries before and after the introduction of the operator merger.