Recon Analytics

America has two half-connected segments and a third that is not connected at all, and the policy conversation gets all three wrong. The two half-connected segments are mirror images, each on a single network: the household with a phone and no home internet, 14.8 million strong at 11.5% of the country in the 2024 American Community Survey five-year estimates, and its mirror, the household with home broadband and no cell phone, three to six million adults the industry does not track.

In a meeting with officials at the Federal Communications Commission, Recon Analytics shared results of a survey of 4,000 consumer mobile and 4,000 home internet consumers.

One of the key questions around the happiest and unhappiest home internet counties is where they are and what the driver is behind the happiness and unhappiness. Five of the ten unhappiest and five of the ten happiest counties are in states that are considered “Republican” and “Democratic”, respectively.

In 2012 the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) was asked to write a report on how it envisioned the allocation of wireless spectrum in the future. Taking the position that clearing spectrum for unencumbered use was too difficult in some cases, the report called for sharing spectrum between incumbent federal, state and local users and commercial users. Licenses should be small, reused, and relicensed and would thereby increase the capacity by a factor of 1,000.