Research

More than almost any other group, Black communities in the Black Rural South lack affordable, high-speed, quality broadband—38 percent of African Americans there report they do not have access to home internet. Expanding broadband could help reduce the deep racial and economic inequalities in education, jobs and healthcare in the region. Too often, efforts to close the digital divide conflate “rural” with “White” and “urban” with “Black.” The Joint Center's report authored by Dr.

As President Biden and Congress debate a $1.2 [tr]illion infrastructure bill that includes a historic investment in broadband, it’s an important moment to question what we mean by digital equity and what it will take to achieve it.

As the US recovers from one of the worst economic crises in our history, we will be looking to small businesses to revitalize our local communities and hire displaced workers. But these enterprises will need high-performance broadband to innovate and adapt to our new, post-COVID reality. Unfortunately, the Federal Communications Commission's standards are not running apace. The FCC has not updated its speed benchmark for 6 years. 2015's definition of 'high-speed' is antiquated—and it is holding us back.

This report examines (1) small business access to broadband and how federal broadband funding programs may serve small businesses, and (2) the extent to which the Federal Communications Commission’s broadband speed benchmark meets the needs of small businesses. Much of the literature GAO reviewed suggests that FCC’s current broadband minimum benchmark speeds—25 megabits per second (Mbps) for downloading and 3 Mbps for uploading—are likely too slow to meet many small business speed needs. GAO is making one recommendation to FCC to solicit stakeholder input and analyze small business broadban

Before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, communities and schools recognized that students without Internet access at home are at a disadvantage. However, an overlooked aspect of this disparity is that many students also lack a desktop or laptop computer at home. Disconnected students likely benefit if they are given free Internet; however, their school performance may still suffer if they are limited to completing assignments on a smartphone.

The Federal Communications Commission, the Department of Agriculture, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration will share information about and coordinate the distribution of federal broadband deployment funds.

Hopes persist that a burst of relocations by tech companies and remote workers will revitalize the American heartland. Maybe remote work and pandemic-spurred moves really are going to redistribute economic vitality more evenly across the country after a decade of excessive concentration in coastal “superstar” cities, or maybe not; while aspects of the corporate relocation story may be real, new evidence raises questions about the true potential of the remote-work-driven renewal storyline.

The Consortium for School Networking's 2021 report  includes IT leadership and infrastructure findings to give school districts and policymakers a holistic understanding of the K-12 technological landscape. This year’s 10 top findings are:

1. Efforts to expand broadband access outside of school have increased dramatically. In 2020, 51 percent of district tech leaders provided off-campus internet services, but in 2021, that nearly doubled to 95 percent.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the US Department of Agriculture are spending $8 million to build a rural broadband testing site in Ames, Iowa, that both industry engineers and researchers from Iowa State University plan to use for developing wireless technologies and piloting rural connectivity strategies.

This report on the connection between access to broadband and labor force participation across all US metro areas finds that: