Telecommunications Policy

The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred global change from traditional office-based work to remote work, driven by policy interventions, and resulting in a significant number of employees worldwide transitioning to working from home. Existing research presents conflicting evidence regarding the relationship between remote work and productivity. However, few have examined the specific mechanisms through which remote work affects productivity.

Investments in high-speed broadband have received considerable attention from policymakers and researchers. Governments are committing to increasing available internet connection speeds through massive public investments. These policies are motivated by arguments according to which improvements in broadband connections play an important role in fostering productivity, economic growth, innovation, and knowledge.

Ubiquitous high-speed fiber-based and mobile broadband availability is a key economic policy goal in the European Union and other developed countries. Policymakers seek to boost economic growth, productivity, and employment, especially in remote areas, through ambitious broadband targets and substantial public funding. This paper reviews the existing literature on high-speed broadband Internet and its socioeconomic impact on key outcome variables.

This paper hypothesizes that Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) enrollment decisions are not solely individual, but also influenced by community-wide considerations, such as housing costs, share of occupied houses, presence of anchor institutions such as public libraries, and population density (i.e., whether a place is urban or rural). The paper develops a regression model that predicts ACP enrollment rates among eligible households at the 5-digit zip code geography as a function of the variables discussed above.

This paper studies the impact of the introduction of fiber broadband in North Carolina, through the lens of student achievement. Campbell links granular data on new fiber construction and advertised download speeds with administrative test score data and local labor market data. Exploiting variation in fiber availability at the census block group level, Campbell implements a difference-in-differences design and find modest effects on educational outcomes, roughly equivalent to lowering class sizes by one student.

With the arrival of the peak smartphone era, users are upgrading their smartphones less frequently, and data growth is decelerating. To ensure effective spectrum management decisions, policy makers require a thorough understanding of prospective wireless broadband technologies, current trends and emerging issues. We identify three emerging issues necessary for successful telecommunication policy. Firstly, evidenced-based policy making needs to be able to measure effectively how much demand takes place where and how.

As societies and economies continue to digitize, the need to understand the digital divide beyond binary availability or adoption metrics is increasing. Understanding the quality and performance of home internet—measured by internet speeds—among different socioeconomic groups contributes to the complex digital equity landscape at a time when all U.S. states and territories are completing digital equity plans.