Research

In order to achieve the goal of universal broadband for everyone in Illinois, broadband must be available and affordable. However, home broadband service is out of reach for many low-income households in Illinois that are unable to afford subscriptions. Therefore, efforts to promote universal broadband should include programs that offer access to affordable broadband service, as well as access to low-cost digital devices and digital literacy training, which have been highlighted as necessary to promote digital inclusion and meaningful broadband adoption.

COVID-19 has turned the floodlights on digital inequality in rural, tribal, and urban communities across the United States.

In October 2019, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society issued Broadband for America’s Future: A Vision for the 2020s. The agenda was comprehensive, constructed upon achievements in communities and insights from experts across the nation. The report outlined the key building blocks of broadband policy—deployment, competition, community anchor institutions, and digital equity (including affordability and adoption).

The purpose of Broadband for America’s Future: A Vision for the 2020s is to collect, combine, and contribute to a national broadband agenda for the next decade, enlisting the voices of broadband leaders in an ongoing discussion on how public policy can close the digital divide and extend digital opportunity everywhere. Leaders at all levels of government should ensure that everyone is able to use High-Performance Broadband in the next decade by embracing the following building blocks of policy:

The US population continues to age rapidly, and this aging boom has a multifold impact on the senior housing industry. Contrary to popular belief, seniors have become increasingly technology-savvy and are enthusiastic internet users. While senior residents continue to consume mainly linear/cable television, online streaming is on the rise. Seniors also increasingly use mobile applications for banking, video chatting, gaming and engaging with their local community.

County Health Rankings & Roadmaps' (CHR&R) 2024 National Findings Report highlights the importance of civic infrastructure and spaces to connect and be informed, with a focus on access to local news, broadband internet and public libraries. CHR&R calls attention to structural barriers like policies, laws and practices that can create obstacles to forms of participation such as voting and worker unionizing. Key findings include:

This report quantifies the size of the nation’s wireless infrastructure sector, including purpose-built cellular towers, indoor and outdoor small cells, macrocell sectors, annual infrastructure spending, and the American jobs that sustain this resource. Key statistics include:

Using a 2003–2019 dataset on broadband adoption in Algeria, we explore its pattern and the market structure, institutional, and socio-economic factors that influenced its pace, which was considerably delayed due to political and social instability during the decade of the 1990s. We propose an integrative model selection approach that simultaneously searches for the best diffusion model among the Bass, Gompertz, and Logistic diffusion models, as well as relevant explanatory variables.

Utilizing a unique dataset of 296 mostly rural households in Nebraska, this study examines rural broadband satisfaction and the distribution of broadband types through two questions: Does reported household satisfaction with broadband connectivity differ with the access method? And how does the built environment influence the distribution of broadband technologies?

The federal government is investing billions of dollars in expanding broadband access. Some new infrastructure—such as broadband towers—will be situated on federal lands. Federal agencies are required to process applications for such permits within 270 days. The Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service process most of these applications. Between 2018-2022, both agencies missed the deadline for some applications and for others couldn't determine if they processed the applications on time.