Research

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.

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:

Up until last year, Nancy Navarro didn’t know how to check her kids’ grades or schedule online appointments. She had Wi-Fi at home so her 15 and 11-year-old kids could do their homework on their school-issued laptops, but she wasn’t online herself very often. But then she noticed that her kids’ school was offering free digital training classes through the local nonprofit EveryoneOn, which aims to connect as many underserved people as possible on the internet.

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.

In the course of the Federal Communications Commission's Office of Economics and Analytics’ (OEA) review of George Ford's Regulation and Investment in the U.S. Telecommunications Industry, staff determined that the underlying data relied upon by the author of this study has been revised by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) since the author’s analysis and the corrected data changes the results. Staff submitted a link to the original BEA data used by Dr. Ford, a link to the revised BEA data, and a comparison Dr. Ford’s two baseline model regressions using the different data sets. 

The American Samoa draft BROADBANDiNEI Digital Equity Plan—released by the Broadband Coordination, Opportunities, Redevelopment and Deployment (BCORD) Office—reflects priorities, strategies, collective needs, and opportunities identified through local coordination with regards to providing affordable, accessible, secure, equitable, internet-for-all.

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?

In 2021, the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program allocated $42.45 billion to enhance high-speed internet access across the United States. As part of this funding initiative, The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) developed a national coverage map to guide the allocation of BEAD funds. This map was the key determinant to direct BEAD investments to areas in need of broadband infrastructure improvements.

In a field focused on maps and megabytes, speed and latency, those of us working to realize universal, equitable broadband can sometimes lose sight of what connectivity can mean for people’s day-to-day lives. Today, we are launching some phenomenal research by EveryoneOn CEO Norma E. Fernandez that not only expertly applies the tools of in-depth, careful, and closely observed, qualitative research, but does so to focus on often overlooked groups—low-income African American/Black and Latina women.

In Massachusetts a consulting program is helping local municipalities navigate digital equity planning. There is no flow of money to municipalities under said program. Instead, the Municipal Digital Equity Planning Program, spearheaded by the Massachusetts Broadband Institute (MBI), pairs towns and cities with consultants to develop strategic plans for digital equity within their communities.