TPRC 2024: The 52nd Research Conference on Communications, Information and Inter

Link to paper

Abstract:
In 2021, Congress allocated billions of dollars to the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), extending the Emergency Broadband Benefit past its classification as a COVID-19 response policy. Since ACP’s inception, over 23 million, or one in six, American families enrolled in the program to offset the price of broadband service and devices. This represents just over half of urban and a third of rural households who were eligible for the program. Earlier this year, the FCC announced that April 2024 would be the last fully-funded month of ACP. Despite considerable bipartisan support, the ACP was fully depleted in May 2024.

Community advocates and local leaders persistently cite affordability as the main reason that residents do not have home broadband subscriptions and adequate devices. This connection inspired our research examining the relationship between broadband access and poverty levels across all fifty states, D.C., Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and Guam.

In anticipation of billions of dollars in broadband funding across the US, we collected statewide statistics from states and territories eligible for the BEAD Program as community-level data from five selected municipalities and counties, where available. Selected communities include a range of population sizes, from 82 to 1.5 million residents, and include a sample of communities investing in different types of broadband and digital inclusion initiatives to compare the local programs’ impact on local adoption rates. Out of a survey of data points from all fifty states, six territories, and 278 communities, we noticed considerable support for our thesis that poverty and Internet access are highly correlated, a finding supported by literature.

Along with American Community Survey (ACS) data, we compiled publications describing state programs and community initiatives. We plan to cross-reference this information with the data collected to better understand outliers in our findings. Additionally, we offer suggestions for policymakers to improve the Internet and device adoption data collection process.