Technology Policy Institute

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s National Telecommunications and Information Agency is trying to make the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program more efficient. However, at least one new provision threatens to undercut these efficiency incentives. NTIA’s new rules improve the previous administration’s rules in many important ways. They eliminate requirements unrelated to broadband that resulted in making it more complicated and expensive for states to create and implement their plans.

Two recent Federal Communications Commission documents have caught my attention.

This paper examines the parallels between historical telecommunications regulation and current proposals for increasing competition in technology markets, focusing on three key market characteristics the sectors share: network effects, economies of scale, and switching costs. Regulators have addressed these issues in telecommunications markets through mandatory interconnection among telephone networks, compulsory asset sharing, and number portability requirements.

The Technology Policy Institute announced the launch of a first-of-its-kind 

High-speed internet access is crucial for economic opportunity and social participation. However, broadband policies have not kept pace with dramatic changes in technology and markets. The administration should: 

Two very real Universal Service Fund (USF) problems need to be addressed: funding and spending. The way the program is funded is inefficient, unsustainable, and regressive. Regardless of the judicial outcome, the tax that the court declared unconstitutional is both inefficient, by taxing a small, price-sensitive, declining base, and regressive, with a higher proportional burden falling on those least able to afford it. The program spends too much money on the wrong things. The High Cost Fund in particular, which accounts for about half of total spending, is outdated and wasteful.

Consumers and policymakers always care about broadband prices. The issue is of particular interest to policymakers now that the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) has ended and as states try to figure out what the “affordability” requirements of the BEAD grants mean and how to implement them. Such analysis should begin with an understanding of current prices and how they have changed. This analysis uses three sources to consider the cost of broadband to consumers: the Federal Communications Commission’s Urban Rate Survey (URS), the U.S.