Challenges to Universal Adoption: A Look at NTIA’s New Data

The National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA)'s Internet Use Survey of November 2021 confirms what the data has said in the past: the digital divide is predominantly a problem of a lack of interest, not affordability, at least with respect to adoption. Affordability is not the dominant driver of non-adoption, a result spanning many years. Also, as adoption rises over time, a lack of interest will increasingly explain non-adoption and price less so. This result comports with economic reasoning. Efforts to close the Digital Divide as adoption rises will be increasingly challenging, since public policy must deal with households that have no interest in the Internet. At high levels of adoption, devoting significant resources to the affordability issue, presumably via subsidies, may not render large payoffs, though getting to a “high adoption” outcome may be the consequence of such subsidies.

[Dr. George Ford is Chief Economist at the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies.]