Research

While broadband availability in the United States continues to expand, people living in rural areas remain among the least likely to have broadband access. Mississippi, for example, is ranked 46 in broadband access and 47 in terms of urban population. The lack of broadband access and usage places rural areas across the nation at a disadvantage for a variety of reasons including economic growth, healthcare, and education. However, cost-to-serve is the primary challenge associated with bringing broadband to rural areas.

Around the country, local governments are grappling with the challenge of getting quality broadband access to their citizens, but without data about what speeds customers are actually experiencing, making effective policy becomes impossible. Internet speed tests can help inform those policies, and while there are several tests available to users, they are not all the same.

President Donald Trump is a prolific Twitter user, using the social media site to promote his policies and criticize his opponents. But determining just how many Americans follow President Trump on the platform is more challenging than it may sound: Twitter, after all, is an international platform used by institutional accounts and bots as well as living, breathing people in the US. A new Pew Research Center analysis estimates that around one-in-five adult Twitter users in the US (19%) follow Trump’s personal account on the platform, @realDonaldTrump.

There is a growing divide in Internet quality of service (QoS) between developed and developing countries. With a panel data of 160 countries for the years 2008-2016, we examined whether the adoption of more pro-competition regulation can narrow this quality divide. Internet quality of service, measured as average connection speed, increased by three times greater in developed compared to developing countries during the period studied. We found that a unit increase in the pro-competition score increased the average connection speed in developed but not in developing countries.

Americans have complicated views about the role social media companies should play in removing offensive content from their platforms. A sizable majority of U.S. adults (66%) say social media companies have a responsibility to remove offensive content from their platforms, but just 31% have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in these companies to determine what offensive content should be removed.

No matter how you look at it, mobile network performance has improved in the US thus far in 2019. In Q1-Q2 2019, the US ranked 40th in the world for mean download speed over mobile, which positions the country between Spain and Saudi Arabia. Mean download speed over mobile in the US increased 24.0% between the same quarter in 2018, to 33.88 Mbps. This raised the US three spots in world rankings for mobile download speed over the prior year. The US ranked 94th for mean upload speed, between Angola and Poland.

The Universal Service Administrative Company used airborne drones to measure mobile wireless coverage in Puerto Rico post-Hurricane Maria. USAC’s vendor conducted a total of 20 drone tests in Puerto Rico; one of which was overlapped by a drive test in order to compare relative performance. The remaining 19 drone tests were conducted in impassible areas. Within Puerto Rico, the test evidence suggests that drones are capable of quickly surveying smaller areas, but may not be as useful for surveying larger areas in a cost-effective manner at this time.

Tracking broadband speed measurements in 207 countries and territories across multiple 12-month periods has allowed us to generate an overall average speed for the globe and to see how this number changes over time. The good news is that the global average speed is rising fast.

Examines reverse auction designed by the Federal Communications Commission to fund deployment of broadband infrastructure in high-cost, mainly rural areas. We assess the effectiveness of the auction's three main objectives: 1) To attract new providers that are willing to provide broadband service in unserved areas; 2) To expand the acceptable service speed and latency levels to achieve public interest objectives; 3) To lower costs of providing service through competitive bidding.

The main objective of this report is to increase awareness of the state of broadband availability in the nine counties that are part of the Southeastern Indiana Regional Planning Council (SIRPC) region and its implications.