Research

The Federal Communications Commission adopted the ambitious National Broadband Plan in 2010, laying out a policy framework meant to end the connectivity gap over the decade.

Google is teaming with one of the country’s largest health-care systems on a secret project to collect and crunch the detailed personal health information of millions of Americans across 21 states. The initiative, code-named “Project Nightingale,” appears to be the largest in a series of efforts by Silicon Valley giants to gain access to personal health data and establish a toehold in the massive health-care industry. Google launched the effort in 2018 with Ascension, the country’s second-largest health system.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has announced more than $3.5 million in funding to support new, independent research into issues at the forefront of national tech policy debates.

Internet freedom is increasingly imperiled by the tools and tactics of digital authoritarianism, which have spread rapidly around the globe. Repressive regimes, elected incumbents with authoritarian ambitions, and unscrupulous partisan operatives have exploited the unregulated spaces of social media platforms, converting them into instruments for political distortion and societal control.

At a time when millions of Americans still do not have access to broadband of any kind, Next Century Cities is a resource for local leaders who are searching for connectivity solutions. Lifting up the voices of local broadband advocates, our work helps to ensure that lawmakers and policymakers understand what is at stake for our member communities, especially those that are still struggling to provide reliable, affordable broadband access for their residents.

When President Donald Trump entered office, Twitter was a political tool that had helped get him elected and a digital howitzer that he relished firing. In the years since, he has fully integrated Twitter into the very fabric of his administration, reshaping the nature of the presidency and presidential power. Early on, top aides wanted to restrain the president’s Twitter habit, even considering asking the company to impose a 15-minute delay on Trump’s messages.

The keen interest by politicians, regulators, and competition authorities in international price rankings has sparked a series of management consultancies to produce regularly studies that purport to compare and rank prices for mobile wireless services across the world. These rankings, so they claim, are the Swiss Army knife of competition analysis. A country that ranks lower on a list is declared a laggard or noncompetitive and thus supposedly is in need of regulatory intervention. Such claims require scrutiny and further analysis.

Benton Senior Fellow Jonathan Sallet called for a new national broadband agenda. Over the past year, Jon has been talking to broadband leaders around the country, asking about who’s currently connected and who’s not. You can read Jon’s findings in Broadband for America’s Future: A Vision for the 2020s. Jon delivered the keynote address at the Broadband Communities conference in Virginia on Wednesday.

IPTV is an important tool to change business structures and move beyond subscription-based business models for telecom operators. However, the level of IPTV penetration differs among operators, which might be closely related to individual operator's strategy for the broadband market and the regulatory environment. Controlling country-specific business environments, this study identifies the key factors influencing IPTV penetration rates.