Portland (OR) residents enjoy some of the nation’s fastest Internet speeds, but newly released Census data shows rural parts of the state continue to lag way behind. In some communities, fewer than half of the homes have fast Internet service. “With the rural markets the state doesn’t do well – or as well,” said Joe Franell, chief executive of Eastern Oregon Telecom, a small Hermiston company serving residents and businesses in seven communities. Overall, the Census found 87 percent of Oregon households were broadband subscribers in 2017. That’s up from 78 percent just five years earlier, and above the national figure of 84 percent. The Census finds up to 98 percent of homes in Portland have broadband access in some areas. It’s quite a different story in some parts of east Multnomah County, where as many as 25 percent of households have no Internet access at all. The divide is even greater in rural communities such as Lake, Jefferson -- and also parts of Clackamas County -- where broadband penetration hovers around 50 percent.

In this paper, we draw upon a nascent but fast-growing empirical economics literature on the earnings effect of labor market concentration to estimate how the Sprint–T-Mobile merger would affect earnings of workers at the US stores that sell the wireless services of the merging firms and their competitors. We find that the merger would reduce earnings in the affected labor markets. Specifically, in the 50 most affected labor markets, we predict that weekly earnings will decline by $63 on average (across markets) using the specification with the largest magnitude, and $10 on average using the smallest-magnitude specification. These weekly earnings declines correspond to annual earnings declines of as high as $3,276 (or $520 under the smallest-magnitude specification).

Sen Ed Markey (D-MA), author of the Children’s Television Act, led eight of this colleagues in calling on the Federal Communications Commission to maintain essential elements of the “Kid Vid” rules, which ensure access to children’s education programming on over-the-air broadcast television, in accordance with the Children’s Television Act. In the letter, the Sens highlight the need to preserve existing rules requiring broadcasters to air three hours of regularly scheduled educational children’s programming a week on their primary stations. “In light of comments recently filed in response to this proposal, we write to encourage you to ensure that all children, regardless of their families’ income level or access to high speed internet, continue to have access to the educational programming they deserve,” write the Sens. “In particular, we urge you to preserve existing rules requiring broadcasters to air three hours of regularly scheduled educational children’s programming a week on their primary stations.” Also signing the letter are Sens Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Gary C. Peters (D-MI), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR)