Research

With the conclusion of the grant and loan awards established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, there remain two primary ongoing federal vehicles which direct federal money to fund broadband infrastructure: the broadband and telecommunications programs at the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Universal Service Fund (USF) programs under the Federal Communications Commission. RUS broadband programs were reauthorized and modified by the 2018 farm bill.

Increased investment from the E-rate program’s modernization is helping to improve school Wi-Fi and broadband connectivity. 69 percent of school system leaders are “very confident” in their wireless network’s ability to support one device per student. Ninety-two percent of school systems are meeting the Federal Communications Commission’s short-term goal of broadband connectivity (100 Mbps per 1,000 students in a district), as well as making strides in the FCC’s long-term goals. School districts are still facing significant infrastructure challenges.

This paper examines how and why activist groups representing marginalized communities of color are increasingly engaging in communications technology policy issues, particularly in relation to issues of digital access and representation.

The Federal Communications Commission's Wireline Competition Bureau announced the 2019 reasonable comparability benchmarks for fixed voice and broadband services for eligible telecommunications carriers (ETCs) subject to broadband public interest obligations, including incumbent local exchange rate-of-return carriers, incumbent price-cap carriers receiving CAF Phase II support, Rural Broadband Experiment providers, and Connect America Fund Phase II Auction (Auction 903) winners. In addition, the FCC posted the fixed voice and broadband services data collected in the most recent urban rate s

While research on the impact of broadband continues to increase, a broad understanding of what being digital ready entails is missing. This study—based on a 1,214 nonrepresentative household survey weighted by income, age, and educational attainment—developed a digital readiness index (DRI) score based on three related but distinct dimensions: device & internet access (DIA), digital resourcefulness and utilization (DRU), and internet benefits and impact (IBI).

Income is the largest determinant of whether or not someone has access. Only 67 percent of households with less than $25,000 in income have access to a computer, and only 51.7 percent of them have access to internet. In comparison, households making between $50,000 and $99,999 had 93.9 percent of households with a computer and 86.2 percent with internet access. Income can determine whether a community needs to rely on the library for internet access. Rural communities with more low-income people have less home internet access.

Only 29 percent of Americans agree the US government should prohibit political bias in online services such as Facebook and Google, according to a new survey from the Center for Data Innovation. Moreover, public support for a government prohibition of political bias online drops even further when respondents consider the potential impact of such rules. Only 21 percent agree the US government should prohibit political bias online if it would create a worse user experience—and that drops to just 19 percent if it would limit free speech.

A report prepared for the Senate that provides the most sweeping analysis yet of Russia’s disinformation campaign around the 2016 election found the operation used every major social media platform to deliver words, images and videos tailored to voters’ interests to help elect President Donald Trump — and worked even harder to support him while in office. The report is the first to study the millions of posts provided by major technology firms to the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), its chairman, and Sen. Mark Warner (VA), its ranking Democrat.

While broadband is widely believed to augment productivity, there is little firm-level evidence of a generalised causal effect. In this paper we examine whether the introduction of digital subscriber line (DSL) broadband services increased firms' productivity in nine sub-sectors within the services and distribution sector in Ireland from 2006 to 2012. Firm-level panel data on firms' characteristics are linked to spatial information on the rollout of DSL.

In 2016, Free Press released Digital Denied, which showed that disparities in broadband adoption — commonly known as the digital divide —stem not only from income inequality, but from systemic racial discrimination. The report found that nearly half of all people in the country without home-internet access were people of color. Much of that gap was indeed the result of income inequality.