Research

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA) has released its Worst Connected Cities of 2019, a list of the cities in the US facing the biggest struggles with Internet connections by drawing from the 2019 American Community Survey (ACS) One-Year Estimates. This data is not an indication of the availability of home broadband service, but rather of the extent to which households are actually connected to it.

Seattle is one of the most “connected” cities in the country. 95% of Seattle households have internet access in the place where they live. But internet adoption is lacking in specific geographic areas and is driven primarily by the affordability of broadband service. Despite an extensive and robust broadband infrastructure, unfortunately, there is still a 5% gap in internet adoption for Seattle residents. This gap is concentrated geographically in certain areas of the City.

Prior to the advent of the COVID-19 crisis, Greenlining asked residents of two California communities, Fresno and Oakland, to share  their struggles with internet access and found these common themes, all of which have been made more urgent by the pandemic: 1) Internet access is not a luxury, 2) Lack of access creates significant hurdles for everyday life, 3) Smartphone access is insufficient, 4) Internet plans designed for low-income families are inadequate, 5) Lack of access is a barrier to academic success. 

Total Internet connections increased by about 4.9% between December 2017 and December 2018 to 441 million. Mobile Internet connections increased 5.7% year-over-year to 331 million in December 2018, while fixed connections grew to 111 million – up about 2.5% from December 2017. Over 54% of connections were at 100 Mbps or more (downstream). Nearly 75% of connections were 25 Mbps or more. The median downstream speed of all reported fixed connections was 100 Mbps.

Total Internet connections increased by about 4.9% between June 2017 and June 2018 to 429 million. Mobile Internet connections increased 5.7% year-over-year to 320 million in June 2018, while fixed connections grew to 109 million – up about 2.8% from June 2017. Nearly 48% of connections were at 100 Mbps or more (downstream). Over 73% of connections were 25 Mbps or more. The percentage of fixed connections with a downstream speed of at least 25 Mbps has grown from 50% (or 50 million connections) in June 2015 to 74% (or 80 million connections) in June 2018.

In 2017, the Federal Communications Commission’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) reported that FCC’s ability to deter and detect alleged Erate program fraud has been severely limited since the program’s inception due to a lack of certain controls. Also, as recently as February 2020, a number of E-rate program participants pled guilty to defrauding the program by billing for equipment and services that were not provided, and obtaining more than $2.6 million in program funds to which they were not entitled. GAO was asked to review fraud risk management in the E-rate program.

Using Federal Communications Commission and other public data sources, this report assesses recent trends in residential fixed broadband pricing between 2015 and 2020 in the United States. The key findings:

Recently, the idea of ICTs being ‘mainstreamed’ in sustainable economic development has been adopted by many countries. For any country, sustainable economic growth is essential for a steadfast and well-balanced development of the entire country. One of the important factors supporting sustainable economic growth is the telecommunications technology and innovation, considering their role and functions as a modern-day indispensable infrastructure. It provides an opportunity for economic development compatible with the safeguard of the environment.

To lead the world's fifth-generation mobile communication networks (5G) market, China introduced several policies to support 5G industry development that will impact telecommunication operators, the main implementers in this industry. Thus, this study examines the impact of the government's 5G policy announcements on telecommunication operators' firm value in China, where the state exerts a strong influence on industry development.

In this paper, we analyse the effect of cable networks on fibre to the x (FTTx) network expansions by drawing on data from a sample of 28 European countries spanning the period 2011 to 2017. We find that there is a negative relationship between cable network coverage and FTTx network expansion. This restraining effect associated with cable networks contradicts the current regulatory regime, which is primarily designed to enable effective competition against the incumbent on copper- and fibre-based infrastructure.