Research

Data collected from an April 7-12 Pew survey found 59% of parents with lower incomes who had children in schools that were remote at the time said their children would likely face at least one of three digital obstacles asked about. Overall, 38% of parents with children whose K-12 schools closed in the spring said that their child was very or somewhat likely to face one or more of these issues. In addition, parents with middle incomes were about twice as likely as parents with higher incomes to report anticipating issues.

For the 2020 American Views survey, Gallup and Knight polled more than 20,000 U.S. adults and found deepening pessimism and further partisan entrenchment about how the news media delivers on its democratic mandate for factual, trustworthy information. Many Americans feel the media’s critical role of informing and holding those in power accountable is compromised by increasing bias. As such, Americans have not only lost confidence in the ideal of an objective media, they believe news organizations actively support the partisan divide.

The Broadband Infrastructure Office and the NC Department of Health and Human Services Office of Rural Health conducted a feasibility study that examined the broadband, health care and telehealth assets – including the health disparities and broadband gaps as well as opportunities – for the 20 counties in North Carolina’s Appalachian region that are most affected by the coal industry. The study confirmed that:

Recently, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration reported initial results from our latest NTIA Internet Use Survey, which showed that Americans were increasingly using a larger and more varied range of devices. But with dozens of topics covered in the survey, there is a lot more we can learn from this data collection, including questions about online activities such as checking email, watching videos and participating in the sharing economy.

For the first time, we are now comparing 5G users’ overall experience across 12 of the world’s leading 5G markets. Globally, our 5G users in Saudi Arabia see the fastest overall average download speed with a Download Speed Experience of 144.5 Mbps ahead of Canada’s 5G users in second place with 90.4 Mbps. Strikingly, 5G Users in the country with the highest adoption of 5G to date, South Korea, rank just third.

We use a county-level panel dataset from 2012 to 2018 to assess the impacts of various state policies on total and rural broadband availability in the US. The primary dependent variable is the percentage of residents with access to 25 Megabits per second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload speeds via a fixed connection, with alternative specifications considering other aspects of availability such as technology type and competition. We control for the main determinants of Internet availability such as income, education, age, and population density.

Mobile data usage is at least 96 times higher today than it was just 10 years ago, according to a new report about US wireless industry growth from industry association CTIA. Annual mobile data consumption jumped from 388 billion megabytes (MB) in 2010 to 37.06 trillion MB in 2019. In 2020, the average smartphone user consumed 9.2 GB per month, up from 6.6 GB per month in 2019.

In early Aug, the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) surveyed its WISP providers on the effect the pandemic has had on network use, changes in download and upload traffic, and network responses, among other matters. Usage remains highly asymmetrical during COVID, with only a small minority of customers citing faster upload speeds as a reason for upgrading their service packages where requested. As a consequence of [COVID-19], download traffic and upload traffic surged, pushing our members to upgrade both last-mile and backhaul capacity.

Key findings:

The digital marketplace is wide-reaching, complicated and self-reinforcing. The systems developed to oversee an earlier time are burdened by industrial era statutes and decades of precedent that render them insufficient for the digital present. In the absence of federal oversight, the dominant digital companies have made their own rules and imposed them on consumers and the market. Just as industrial capitalism operated—and thrived—under public interest obligations, so should internet capitalism be grounded in public interest expectations.