SSRN

The Federal Communications Commission's Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) is a means-tested federal program launched in January 2022 to support broadband connectivity among low-income households in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The expiration of the ACP benefit, the largest ever consumer support program for telecommunication services in U.S. history, invites a discussion about the impact of the program and what alternative policy mechanisms exist to promote equitable access to broadband.

In this paper, we construct a network cost model to understand the rationality of common requirements on the number and location of interconnection points. We also wish to understand if it is rational to apply these requirements to interconnection between an internet service provider (ISP) and a content delivery network (CDN). We construct a model of ISP traffic-sensitive network costs. We consider an ISP that offers service across the US. We parameterize the model using statistics about the population and locations of people in the contiguous US.

In an effort to expand Internet access, local and federal policymakers have sought to use speed test data to determine where to allocate funding.

This research characterizes the state of Internet equity in Chicago (IL), focusing on different dimensions of Internet equity, including availability, affordability, and adoption. To this end, we combine multiple existing datasets to understand the digital divide in Chicago and the contributing factors. Our findings show a disparity in broadband adoption rates across neighborhoods in Chicago: Broadband adoption varies between 58--93% across community areas, with low access areas mostly concentrated in South and West Chicago.

A longstanding approach to measuring Internet performance is to directly compare throughput against pre-defined benchmarks (e.g., 25 Mbps downstream, 3 Mbps upstream).

In the long-running net neutrality debate, a key assumption has been that broadband and broadband Internet access service are “jurisdictionally interstate.” But are they really? And what does that mean? In practice, the interstate assumption has meant that important decisions about broadband law and policy are made almost exclusively by the federal government. The “who decides” question took on new immediacy in 2017, when the Federal Communications Commission gutted federal net neutrality rules, and then attempted to preempt the states from adopting their own.

This paper analyzes the asserted need for, and likely consequences of, four types of broadband regulation proposals in recent circulation: 1) facilities-sharing obligations; 2) retail price controls; 3) internet interconnection obligations; and 4) amorphous and open-ended ISP conduct rules like those the FCC imposed in 2015. For the most part, we see little merit to any of these proposals under current market conditions.

In response to Twitter’s decision to label one of the President’s tweets misleading, the Trump White House issued an executive order to limit Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act via agency rulemaking. In the Order, President Donald Trump calls for the Federal Communications Commission to “interpret” Section 230 in a manner that curtails websites’ ability to remove and restrict user speech. This article analyzes the Order and concludes that this effort will fail. First, the FCC does not have rulemaking authority to issue the proposed rules.

Housing scholars stress the importance of the information environment in shaping housing search behavior and outcomes. Rental listings have increasingly moved online over the past two decades and, in turn, online platforms like Craigslist are now central to the search process. Do these technology platforms serve as information equalizers or do they reflect traditional information inequalities that correlate with neighborhood sociodemographics?

The first years of the Trump Administration have seen a resurgence in state telecommunications regulation—driven not by state institutional concerns, but by policy disagreements over net neutrality. This article addresses the broader federalism questions raised by this net neutrality clash. Part I provides an overview of telecommunications federalism from the 1934 Communications Act through the present day, looking at the division of federal and state jurisdiction over traditional telephone service, wireless telephony, and information services.