Research

US wireless carriers have long said they may slow video traffic on their networks to avoid congestion and bottlenecks. But new research shows the throttling happens pretty much everywhere all the time.

Net neutrality has been the subject of considerable public debate over the past decade. Despite the potential impact on content providers and users, there is currently a lack of tools or data for stakeholders to independently audit the net neutrality policies of network providers. In this work, we address this issue by conducting a one-year study of content-based traffic differentiation policies deployed in operational networks, using results from 1,045,413 crowdsourced measurements conducted by 126,249 users across 2,735 ISPs in 183 countries/regions.

The National Digital Inclusion Alliance and the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program have partnered to create the Broadband Research Base, a searchable collection of reports, studies and journal articles that address the impact of broadband and digital inclusion on community and individual well-being. Has anybody studied the impact of broadband availability, speed or adoption on local economic growth? On K-12 education? On health care?

In our increasingly digitized world, it is critical to protect individuals’ privacy. As policymakers consider passing meaningful privacy legislation, civil rights protections are a critical but mostly overlooked component. To have effective privacy legislation, we must ensure that companies’ data practices do not violate individuals’ civil rights—especially when it comes to marginalized communities.

The digital divide – the “haves” and “have nots” when it comes to internet access and use – is an abiding concern for telecommunication and internet policymakers at all levels of government. The Federal Communications Commission’s focus on deployment means policymakers miss an entirely different dimension of the problem – broadband adoption. Ensuring the ubiquity of high-speed networks is a laudable goal. But if a lot of people are not subscribing even when networks pass their residences, that’s a different problem. Analysis of broadband adoption data shows that:

USTelecom met with FCC Commissioners Geoffrey Starks and Jessica Rosenworcel and their chiefs of staff on August 7 and 8, 2019 to discuss preliminary findings from the Broadband Mapping Consortium Pilot Project that USTelecom is leading along with ITTA and WISPA. USTelecom said structure counts per census block in the pilot states versus 2011 census housing structure data are incorrect for nearly 50% of census blocks, and the 2011 census housing structure data is both over-inclusive and under-inclusive.

Measuring broadband is an ongoing challenge for policymakers and, for many participants in broadband policy debates, often a source of frustration. The frustration about broadband measurement emanates from what seems knowable – at least it is about other infrastructure. We know where our roads and highways run. Today it is easy to know when they are clogged, where there are tolls, and how much those tolls cost. Electric infrastructure is essentially ubiquitous and it isn’t hard, in most places, to find out the cost of a kilowatt hour and compare prices among providers.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai sent letters to Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Joni Ernst (R-IA), Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Jon Tester (D-MT), and Rep. Tom O’Halleran (D-AZ) on July 31, 2019, and August 1, 2019, in response to their letters expressing concern with broadband mapping.

Not so long ago, “closing the digital divide” primarily meant getting people online, and a steady upward trend in adoption is evidence of progress on that front. Yet gaps in broadband adoption remain – particularly for low-income households – and closing those gaps is about more than simply offering a low-cost internet service. Even with the availability of low-cost offers, it remains a challenge to encourage the remaining disconnected people to sign up for broadband service.