Research

While most Californians have access to broadband, at least two million households (15 percent) still do not—a gap known as the digital divide. In 2021, California invested $6 billion through Senate Bill (SB) 156 to expand broadband infrastructure, address affordability, and promote digital literacy. The Public Policy Institute of California presents findings from the first year of implementation, drawing on statewide broadband data and interviews with 41 community partners, spread across 54 of California’s 58 counties. The Institute finds that:

As the City of South Bend’s Civic Innovation team works to better connect residents in our community, we need to first understand residents’ current experiences across connectivity options.

This white paper provides an overview of current and potential new mid-band and extended mid-band spectrum availability in the United States over the next several years, including technical characteristics and challenges, as well as policy and regulatory landscape. The realization of new bands in these spectrum ranges depends on several developments, including studies and solutions for coexistence with incumbent services. There are currently no bands in the spectrum pipeline in the US.

The study proposes an economic growth econometric model that accounts for the role of fixed broadband in mitigating the economic losses resulting from COVID-19. Results show that had the national fixed broadband penetration been the same as that of the most-connected state (Delaware, 91.4%) rather than the actual level of 70.5%1 , the national GDP contraction in 2020 would have been 1% rather than the actual 2.2%. The analysis also indicates that those states with higher adoption of fixed broadband infrastructure were able to mitigate a larger portion of their 2020 economic losses due to pa

The City of Cambridge's (MA) comprehensive year-long municipal broadband feasibility study. The report examines the feasibility of the City of Cambridge implementing a municipal fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) service, providing a detailed FTTP design and cost estimate, and a range of business and financial models for building, operating and providing service to all premises in Cambridge.

By September 2022, the average download speed for home broadband connections in the UK was 65.3 Mbit/s, an increase of 10% compared to March 2022. This was largely due to people upgrading to faster services. Less than 3% of households had average download speeds of less than 10 Mbit/s, with cable connections offering the highest average download speed. The proportion of homes in the research with broadband connections that use a superfast package (with an advertised download speed of 30 Mbit/s or higher) was 93%.

Broadband access is an essential social determinant of health, the importance of which was made apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic. We sought to understand disparities in broadband access within cities and identify potential solutions to increase urban access. This was a descriptive secondary analysis using multi-year cross-sectional survey data. Data were obtained from the City Health Dashboard and American Community Survey.

The US wireless and mobile industry spent $11.9 billion building additional capacity and coverage into the nation’s wireless networks in 2022. This does not include spending on spectrum or maintenance and ongoing network operations. In total, network operating expenses for US wireless and mobile networks in 2022 topped $46 billion. Some key statistics:

Prior to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, adoption of telemedicine was slow and its usage was rare. However, during the pandemic, usage of telemedicine increased dramatically with physicians using a number of telemedicine tools to deliver health services, while limiting patients’ exposure to the virus. Wide use of telemedicine may impact various aspects of health care delivery such as quality, cost, and access to care. Thus, a detailed understanding about the usage of telemedicine is vital to develop better policies associated with health care delivery.

The American Rescue Plan has helped to power one of the strongest and most equitable recoveries on record while making investments which position our nation for economic success in the coming decades. Over 30,000 state, local, Tribal, and territorial governments have received State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds and made $24.3 billion in critical infrastructure investments in broadband, water, and sewer. Governments have reported budgeting nearly $7.3 billion in SLFRF funds towards broadband.