Research

More than one in five low-income households did not have any access to the internet in 2018, more than four times the rate of all other households. A staggering 43.7 percent of low-income households lacked access to personal high-speed internet at home, more than double that of the rest of the population.  Our analysis of data from the American Community Survey (ACS) shows that immigrant communities are also heavily affected. More than 5.2 million immigrant households, almost three out of 10, lacked access to personal broadband internet access at home in 2018.

The COVID-19 public health crisis has acutely and maybe even permanently changed the way many of us work. The future of the work environment is still unknown but we are increasingly seeing a future where telework, telelearning, and telehealth are valuable commodities for public health and economic resilience. However, short- and long-term investments are critical to improving our current state of work and internet access, both through broadband and increased affordability. Below are some suggestions.

Short-term responses

“Middle-skill” jobs make up a large portion of the market, has positions to fill, but suffers from a dearth of trained workers—especially when it comes to digital skills. Digital skills refer to a person’s ability to use digital tools, applications, and networks to access and manage information. Pandemic-driven unemployment will only put the middle-skill issue into sharper relief.

Nearly 17 million new US jobs (16.7 million) were created during the nine-year period when 4G wireless networks were deployed and became a key driver of the US economy. At the beginning of the 4G era in 2011, 3.7 million jobs were connected to the wireless industry – a number that rose to 20.4 million by 2019. Overall, the US wireless industry gross domestic product (GDP) grew 253% to $690.5 billion between 2011 and 2019. Experts expect the industry’s GDP to increase by 126% between 2011 and 2019 to $441.8 billion. But instead, wireless GDP hit $690.5 billion in 2019.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a near-total shutdown of the U.S. school system, forcing more than 55 million students to transition to home-based remote learning practically overnight. In most cases, that meant logging in to online classes and accessing lessons and assignments through a home internet connection. Sadly, that was not an option for children in one out of three Black, Latino, and American Indian/Alaska Native households.

The US Department of Health and Human Services, through the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, is releasing a new report showing the dramatic utilization trends of telehealth services for primary care delivery in Fee-for-Service (FFS) Medicare in the early days of the coronavirus disease 2019 COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE). This brief seeks to address the issue of how and whether the Medicare telehealth flexibilities introduced to address the COVID-19 pandemic may have helped maintain access to primary health care during the PHE.

We evaluate a program by a private Internet Service Provider intended to encourage low-income households to subscribe to broadband internet service.

A majority of parents in the US (66%) – who include those who have at least one child under the age of 18, but who may also have an adult child or children – say that parenting is harder today than it was 20 years ago, with many in this group citing technology as a reason why, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in March.

On May 28, the President of the United States signed an Executive Order. Under this order—at the direction of the President—the National Telecommunications and Information Administration is filing a petition July 27 with the Federal Communications Commission. In it, the Administration is asking the FCC to come up with rules moderating online content. We are told to do so using a law known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

This paper tracks increasingly aggressive initiatives by the United States government to reallocate spectrum on an expedited and unilateral basis well before conclusion of inter-governmental coordination. Rather than embrace the customary commitment to achieve consensus on global spectrum allocations at the International Telecommunication Union (“ITU”), the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) has auctioned off large blocks of frequencies for the next generation (“5G”) of wireless services.