Research

Using a multi-modal approach, Discovery Education—along with Comcast—sought to deepen understanding of remaining barriers to home internet adoption among students and their families by exploring the role schools (educators and administrators) are playing, with a particular focus on family involvement in bridging students’ abilities to connect to high-speed internet to support learning. The study found that:

Traffic referrals to the top global news sites from Meta's Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) has collapsed over the past year, according to data from Similarweb. Website business models that depended on clicks from social media are now broken, as regulatory 

Last month, Benton Institute for Broadband & Society staff, fellows, former fellows, and friends attended the 51st Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC) in Washington (DC). Benton Senior Fellow and Public Advocate Gigi Sohn delivered the keynote, Executive Director Adrianne Furniss awarded the

Twenty-two percent of broadband customers in China have access to downlink speeds of at least 1 Gbps. China is progressing in fixed-line broadband as well as mobile, according to its latest government statistics. The country's three big operators reported 622 million fixed-line broadband users at the end of August, which is up 32.1 million from the start of the year. All told, of the 587 million Chinese broadband users, 94 percent are on 100 Mbps and above. The country's success in rolling out advanced infrastructure and racking up big subscriber adds is due to several factors, such as a su

This Reuters Institute report uses survey data from 20 countries and qualitative research from the United Kingdom (UK), US, and Germany to explore who is paying for news content online, which publications they pay for, how much they pay, and what motivations they have for subscribing or donating to news. The focus is  on how the cost-of-living crisis is impacting willingness to pay for online news. Key findings include that payment for online news is leveling off with high levels of cancellation strongly linked to the cost-of-living crisis.

 A new study of more than 750 strategy consultants showed that AI helped them produce better content, more quickly in many tasks—but the consultants were "less likely to produce correct solutions" by attempting tasks of similar difficulty which fell outside the AI model's capabilities.Of the consultants asked to develop new ideas—a challenge within GPT-4's known capabilities—those who received both AI access and guidance "consistently" performed better than those given AI access only.

The goal of the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s Digital Equity Plan is to establish a roadmap that ensures everyone, regardless of their background or community, has access to the necessary technological resources to fully engage in our society, democracy, and economy. The Kentucky Education and Labor Cabinet’s (ELC) Department of Workforce Development (DWD) has made the state's draft plan available to the public for feedback until October 15, 2023.

Spectrum is vital to our most sensitive and important Federal missions, including military radar operations for homeland security, the training of our war fighters before they deploy overseas, and our ability to develop new and advanced military capabilities. Within this context, the Department of Defense has completed and submitted to the Department of Commerce the Emerging Mid-Band Radar Spectrum Sharing (EMBRSS) Feasibility Assessment as directed by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Limited global research exists about girls’ and boys’ access to and use of mobile phones. For girls, access is much more diverse and colourful than simply whether they ‘have’ or ‘have not’ got a phone. Access is often transient, and diverse ownership, borrowership and sharing practices are flourishing. Boys are 1.5 times more likely to own a phone and 1.8 times more likely to own a smartphone. They're also more likely to use phones in more diverse and internet-enabled ways than girls. Girls are going to great lengths to gain access.

AT&T and Comcast joined the 5G Open Innovation Lab, a venture that has been funding start-ups and others working in 5G research. Along with looking to improve 5G edge technology, a primary goal of the OAI Lab is to search for killer apps for 5G. The group hopes that adding the large carriers will help to continue to support the 118 start-ups that have already been funded by the organization which has raised over $1.5 billion. I always find talk of a killer app to be interesting since that was never the real goal of 5G.