Research

Reports that employ attempts to inform communications policymaking in a systematically and scientific manner.

South Carolina Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program Five-Year Action Plan

South Carolina is excited to utilize the approximately $551 million of its allocated Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding to take the next steps to improve access to high-speed broadband across the state and has articulated its vision, goals, strategies, and other relevant information in this Five-Year Action Plan to describe both what the State of South Carolina intends to accomplish and how it intends to do so.

State of North Carolina BEAD Five-Year Plan

North Carolina’s five-year action plan for the state’s Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program funding has been approved by both the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The  Division of Broadband and Digital Equity made the draft plan available for public comment earlier in summer 2

Kansas 2023 Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment 5 Year Action Plan

The Kansas Office of Broadband Development submitted the state’s comprehensive Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Five-Year Action Plan (FYAP) to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

Assessing the Utility of ChatGPT Throughout the Entire Clinical Workflow: Development and Usability Study

Large language model (LLM)–-based artificial intelligence chatbots direct the power of large training data sets toward successive, related tasks as opposed to single-ask tasks, for which artificial intelligence already achieves impressive performance. The capacity of LLMs to assist in the full scope of iterative clinical reasoning via successive prompting, in effect acting as artificial physicians, has not yet been evaluated. The objective of the study was to evaluate ChatGPT’s capacity for ongoing clinical decision support via its performance on standardized clinical vignettes.

Real Impact: Partnering to bridge the digital divide reaps rural benefits

Illinois farmers and communities need broadband internet to thrive. The Illinois Innovation Network (IIN) and its driven partners intend to make that happen by securing federal dollars earmarked for bridging the digital divide. IIN-funded research will help them make their case. It provides attention-grabbing estimates of how much more farmers could produce with reliable internet. Public university partners said the total economic gain of added production that would accompany increased broadband coverage is 3.6% for corn and 3.8% for soybeans.

Why are Individuals with Disabilities a "Covered Population"?

In 20218 more than 40 million people in the United States were living with a disability, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. According to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, even as majorities of these Americans report having certain technologies, the digital divide between those who have a disability and those who do not remains:

CBO Scores the PRESS Act

H.R. 4250, the "PRESS Act," would exempt journalists and third-party service providers, such as telecommunications carriers and Internet service providers (ISP), from being compelled to identify a source or disclose other information that was gathered or created as part of news gathering activities unless such information is necessary to prevent an act of terrorism or a threat of imminent violence.

CBO Scores the E-BRIDGE Act

H.R. 1752, the "E-BRIDGE Act," would authorize the Economic Development Administration (EDA) to award grants for high-speed broadband projects to public-private partnerships and consortiums, and would allow grant recipients to use in-kind donations, such as real property, to meet cost-sharing requirements.

AI could choke on its own exhaust as it fills the web

The internet is beginning to fill up with more and more content generated by artificial intelligence rather than human beings, posing weird new dangers both to human society and to the AI programs themselves. Experts estimate that AI-generated content 

The Importance of the Universal Service Fund

On July 27, 2023, the U.S. Senate's Universal Service Fund (USF) Working Group invited public comment on the future of the USF with the stated goal of creating a bipartisan forum to guide education, awareness, and policymaking on the USF. The opportunity to weigh in with the senators has had me thinking about the importance of the USF for bringing affordable broadband infrastructure and services to millions of people around the country. So I'm taking this opportunity to share my thoughts on one of the most important tools in our national effort to reach truly universal broadband.