Research

Telecommuting relates directly to transportation demand and pattern, congestion mitigation, and population migration, as well as to the sustainability, livability, and prosperity of communities. The objective of this research is to assess the impact of temporarily shifting the workforce to telecommuting in Greater Minnesota on workplace policy changes, employee support, and future telecommuting plans; employees’ experience of telecommuting during COVID-19 and forecast of future telecommuting; and differences among geographic areas, life circumstances, and demographic characteristics.

How can policymakers best estimate Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) eligibility and participation rates? The key finding here is that using 200% of the Federal Poverty Level as the only eligibility criteria significantly undercounts eligible households and therefore inflates participation rates. Further, the undercount varies significantly across states (which we hypothesize is linked to whether states expanded Medicaid eligibility after 2010).

The Small Business Broadband and Emerging Information Technology Enhancement Act of 2022 (S. 3906) would require the Small Business Administration to hire a coordinator for and train employees on broadband and emerging information technologies and to complete a study and report to Congress. The act also would require small business development centers to help entrepreneurs access broadband and other emerging information technologies. CBO estimates that enacting S. 3906 would not affect direct spending or revenues.

Scientists from universities in Sweden and Denmark transmitted nearly double an internet’s worth of data through a fiber optic cable in one second using a laser-powered chip — a world record. The chip achieved dizzying speeds by using a single laser and a specialized light-creating device to transmit data over fiber optic cables. The number of data researchers sent, roughly 1.84 petabytes, far exceeds the roughly 1 petabyte of data transmitted over the entire internet every second (A petabyte of data is roughly a million gigabytes).

Identifying problems with Wi-Fi can be difficult, and people often just turn Wi-Fi off on their devices and instead use their cellular data connection.

In January 2022, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), which proposed requiring internet service providers to display broadband consumer disclosure labels prominently at the point of sale.

In January 2022, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), which proposed requiring internet service providers to display broadband consumer disclosure labels prominently at the point of sale.

Ofcom’s Home Broadband Performance Report reveals that the median average speed of a home broadband connection in the UK has reached 59.4 Mbps. That’s an 18% increase from 50.4 Mbps the previous year, and a 60% increase on the average speed recorded in 2018 (37 Mbps). Also, 91% of homes from our study now take a superfast package (advertised download speed of at least 30 Mbps), up from 85% 12 months before. Previous Ofcom research has shown that over 7 million broadband households are out of contract and paying more than they need to.

Many carriers and last-mile providers may be interested in purchasing out-of-the-box “lit” services from a middle-mile network, like a Virtual Private Network (VPN) or connectivity to cloud providers or the global Internet.

A statewide middle-mile network may consist of multiple layers of equipment and software to complete “handoffs” of data to and from last-mile providers, translate that data into light pulses sent over fiber-optic cable, and connect to the global Internet or cloud service providers like Netflix and Amazon Web Services. However, not every last mile-provider may wish to connect to a middle-mile network in the same way. Some may require greater capacity or seek greater control over services they create themselves and provide to their customers.