AT&T lost broadband customers in the second quarter of 2020, dropping from 14.05 million to 13.94 million. Fiber customers rose from 4.1 million to 4.32 million during the three-month period, but losses in the DSL category brought the total number of customers down. The average revenue per user in broadband was $51.61/month. In the three months ending June 30, AT&T reported a net loss of 954,000 video customers. That includes an 886,000-customer net loss from AT&T's "Premium TV" services, a category that includes DirecTV satellite, U-verse wireline service, and the AT&T TV online service that mimics cable TV. Another 68,000 customers left AT&T TV Now, a separate streaming service formerly known as DirecTV Now. Higher prices helped drive the customer losses. As it has in past quarters, AT&T said its practice of giving out fewer promotional-pricing deals contributed to the customer losses for AT&T TV Now. AT&T now has 18.4 million video customers, including both Premium TV and AT&T TV Now, down from nearly 25.5 million in mid-2018. About 91,000 customers who are counted among the net TV losses actually still had service as of June 30. These are subscribers "for whom we have agreed not to terminate service under the Federal Communications Commission's 'Keep Americans Connected Pledge,'" AT&T said. "For reporting purposes, the company counts these subscribers as if they had disconnected service."

New, more accurate and detailed broadband maps are on their way. The telecom policy crowd fervently hopes the data upgrade will help us better address digital divides and other issues. But maps and data alone won’t solve anything. Skill, expertise and time will all be required to study and use the new maps, and the resources required grow as the datasets become larger and more complex. Data scientists and researchers will need to ingest and clean the new data, visualize geographic shapes, build models, run regressions and more. This work involves cloud computing infrastructure and geospatial analysis tools, as well as statistics and econometric tools already in use.

Sarah Oh argued in a recent proposal to the Federal Communications Commission that the 5G Fund for Rural America should include a small amount to fund the research and analysis necessary to use the new maps. Specifically, she suggests that 1 percent of the proposed $9 billion — approximately $9 million per year for 10 years — could be used to fund this research. The FCC’s own economics staff could use some of these resources, while some should go to independent scholars in order to avoid conflicts of interest that may arise when an agency is in charge of evaluating itself. This research fund, which represents less than half a percent of total annual USF spending and less than half the amount spent on USF administration, could yield substantial new insights, particularly if allocated to academics who could, for example, direct studies by graduate students on a host of issues.

[Scott Wallsten is president and senior fellow at the Technology Policy Institute. Sarah Oh is senior fellow at the Technology Policy Institute.]