The Broadband Tribal Gap: An Empirical Evaluation

This study focuses on broadband deployment over the years 2014- 2020 in Tribal and non-Tribal census tracts using the Federal Communications Commission’s Form 477 data to quantify progress. This “Tribal Gap” is measured as the difference in average broadband availability between Tribal and non-Tribal census tracts. Unmatched and matched samples are used, and a sample of census tracts within 30 miles of a Tribal area is also analyzed with and without matching. In all cases, the gap between Tribal and non-Tribal census tracks has been getting closer to zero over time and by 2020 (the last year's data are available) the Tribal Gap was near zero in all cases, especially when the deployment differences are conditioned on a few covariates. Indeed, the Tribal Gap is nearly fully explained by differences in demographic characteristics. These results are encouraging and suggest efforts to close the Tribal Gap are meeting with some success, though many factors that determine deployment largely are beyond regulatory remedy (e.g., population density). These results are largely encouraging and suggest efforts to close the Tribal Gap are meeting with some success, though work remains to be done. These results do not imply that broadband is ubiquitous in either Tribal or non-Tribal areas; instead, these results simply demonstrate that the difference in availability between Tribal and non-Tribal areas is shrinking and that this difference is mostly explained by a few demographic characteristics.