Research

The United States has long struggled with a health care system that is both expensive and often inaccessible when it comes to providing certain populations with equitable care. The White House and Congress acted quickly to transition patients to telehealth during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the future adoption and use of telehealth will depend on how the U.S. health care system addresses coverage and reimbursement, medical licensure, and service modalities.

Broadband is critical to modern life. Despite federal efforts, broadband access on Tribal lands has traditionally lagged behind the rest of the country. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) was asked to review federal efforts for improving broadband on Tribal lands.

Since 2020, misinformation and disinformation related to election and voter suppression have continued to spread at a growing rate across online platforms. While internet platforms ramped up attempts to combat such information during the 2020 elections, many of these efforts appear to have been temporary measures. In anticipation of the 2022 US midterm elections, this report evaluates how online platforms are combating misleading election information against a selection of recommendations made by the Open Technology Institute in 2020.

The Wisconsin Governor’s Task Force on Broadband Access releases its second report. In 2022, the Task Force worked as Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), making a once-in-a-generation investment in broadband access, adoption, and affordability. Almost all of the recommendations from the first annual Task Force report still ring true, and the Task Force members believe that the goals and recommendations set within the first report should be advanced, as seen in the Policy recommendations.

According to USTelecom's 2021 Broadband Capital Expenditures report, America's broadband industry investment reached a twenty-year high in 2021, driving $86 billion in capital expenditures into the nation’s communications infrastructure. The improvements are making US broadband networks faster and more widely available. The 2021 capital influx is a recent high-water mark but it stands on the shoulders of decades of continued investment into America’s world-leading communications infrastructure. Since 1996, US providers have invested $2 trillion into their networks and communities.

In a previous study, CoSN examined the network connectivity experience of students who participated in virtual learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now that many students have returned to their school locations, CoSN wanted to see how things changed. Major findings of the 2022 Home Internet Connectivity Study include:

Opensignal released its July 2022 5G Experience Report. This report shows data collected between March 16 and June 13, 2022. Key findings include:

In November 2021, the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, Black Brilliance Research Project (BBR), and Community Informatics Lab at Simmons University launched the six-city Digital Equity Action Research (DEAR) Fellowship. The DEAR Fellowship helped young adults, ages 19–24, learn participatory action research skills to examine and address the root causes of digital inequities in their communities. Participatory Action Research (PAR) is different from traditional research paradigms.

Broadband access is increasingly necessary for everyday activities and especially vital for businesses, remote workers, online education and health care appointments, but Empire State Development’s (ESD) New NY Broadband Program has fallen short of its mission to bring universal broadband access to New Yorkers, according to an audit by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. The program was created in 2015 to make high-speed (100 megabits per second or Mbps) broadband service “universal” in all but the most remote areas of the state by 2018.

This report assesses spectrum sharing to help observers look realistically at the prospects for sharing and barriers to realizing its more aspirational promises. Key findings include: