Research

Pew aims to mitigate the effects of increasingly frequent and destructive natural disasters by boosting investment in mitigation, ensuring that infrastructure is flood-ready, and promoting clean energy resilience. Pew also works with state and federal policymakers, researchers, and other partners to accelerate the nation’s progress toward universal and affordable high-speed internet service—which includes building, linking, and maintaining the infrastructure required to provide broadband connections.

Despite increased investment in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of households in the rural United States still lack adequate access to high-speed internet. In this study, we evaluate a wireless broadband network deployed in Turney, a small, underserved rural community in northwest Missouri. In addition to collecting survey data before and after this internet intervention, we collected pre-treatment and post-treatment survey data from comparison communities to serve as a control group.

Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NM) and Jacky Rosen (D-NM) sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission asking the body to reconsider maps drafted for the Silver State's broadband Internet connectivity, calling the drafts "deeply flawed" and warning that such maps could perpetuate the digital divide among the state's urban and rural areas.

There is widespread concern that foreign actors are using social media to interfere in elections worldwide. Yet data have been unavailable to investigate links between exposure to foreign influence campaigns and political behavior. Using longitudinal survey data from US respondents linked to their Twitter feeds, we quantify the relationship between exposure to the Russian foreign influence campaign and attitudes and voting behavior in the 2016 US election.

There has been a lot of recent press about the new ability for households to challenge broadband coverage claimed at their homes by internet service providers (ISP). The Federal Communications Commission's new National Broadband Map also allows folks to challenge the coverage claimed by cellular carriers. There are two ways to challenge the claimed cellular coverage – by individuals or by local governments. The challenge process for individuals is as follows:

The purpose of this brief is to raise awareness of the difficulties rural communities face when trying to address the device ownership issue. Rural areas are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to providing and supporting device ownership. This is a crucial piece of the internet use and digital equity puzzle. These rural-oriented difficulties are broken into three categories summarized as the “Three S’s:” Status Quo, Supply, and Support.

On Friday, December 30, 2022, the Federal Communications Commission released its third Communications Marketplace Report. In the RAY BAUM’S Act of 2018, Congress requires the FCC to assess the state of competition in the communications marketplace.

Internet connectivity continues to speed ahead for people around the world, especially as countries prioritize and improve mobile and fixed broadband networks. The improvement of global median download speeds has been somewhat asymmetrical over the past year on the Speedtest Global Index. Fixed broadband speeds made greater strides over the past year than mobile download speeds, with fixed broadband speeds becoming at least 28% faster and mobile becoming nearly 17% faster from November 2021 to November 2022.

"The single most critical question facing cable investors is what happens to broadband subscriber growth from here," said Craig Moffett, the influential principal and senior analyst at MoffettNathanson. "If the problem facing cable broadband today is saturation, then subscriber growth likely flatlines from here.