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

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The FCC Broadband Data Collection (BDC) program has had—and will continue to have—tremendous impact on directing policy interventions and funding towards the goal of achieving broadband equity, access, and deployment across the United States.
In this paper, we share our experience analyzing the data disseminated by the FCC as part of this program.
We focus on discussing the challenges and limitations that one may encounter when exploring the datasets made publicly available as part of this program.
Examples are the lack of direct, public data on the fabric layer; the retroactive removal of availability records from past data releases; and the purely file-based data serving model.
We provide recommendations to stakeholders on ways to overcome these challenges and cope with limitations.
These recommendations seek to introduce best practices for processing and analyzing the BDC data.
Where appropriate, we also bring suggestions to the FCC on approaches to eliminate data limitations and lower barriers to analysis.
These suggestions involve changes to how BDC data is published, served, updated, and summarized by the FCC.

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This paper presents initial research to contribute to the discussion surrounding broadband access data. In this paper, an approach to quantifying community behaviors across critical demographics for broadband mapping is explored and a research roadmap presented. Ultimately, the goal of this research is to offer a recommendation for improvement of the U.S. federal broadband map data process to establish the best holistic representation of broadband access for public policy research and decision making. The paper explores two initial research questions. First, how have community behavior and requirements data been collected and considered in U.S. broadband development initiatives, subsidies, and policies? Second, how have community behaviors been quantified in previous policy research? Finally, this paper presents a research roadmap on how to identify and apply community behavior data to the National Broadband Map for effective policy decisions.

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The South Korea telecom services market reports annual revenues of $32 billion. The country is noted for market-based network usage fees in which content providers (both domestic and foreign) negotiate access to broadband networks. The magnitude and volume of such fees are not public, but news reports suggest they amount to less than 1 percent of the total market revenue. This paper investigates the size and volume of the network usage fee regime and impacts on related broadband and content markets. 

As usage fees have been place for some years in Korea, this paper reviews the development of the Korean broadband and content markets and whether changes can be observed after the introduction of usage fees to the industry structure, revenue, market size, concentration, penetration, technological development, and other variables. International comparisons are offered to see whether there are statistically significant differences in countries without formal usage fee regimes. 

Results are expected to be correlative, not causative. Theoretical modeling is explored in parallel to explore whether and how results could change under different circumstances.

A conceptual framework suggests expected relationship between variables and defines objectives for the research process. In this respect, the authors hypothesize that network usage fees have a neutral effect on the market, or at best positive. Alternative scenarios are explored, for example the refusal to supply by content providers and the lack of reinvestment of fees into the network. 

The paper explores other reasons why the Korean regime may be an appropriate model or not, for example, the discrete number of broadband providers, the presence of an authority to meter and publicize traffic levels, the ease of measurement of international traffic because of limited entry points to the country, policy orientation towards technological innovation, and so on. 

The paper is relevant for at least 4 themes promoted at TPRC52 including
• Broadband Deployment, Access and the Digital Divide, Criticality of Infrastructure
• Social Dimensions to Communications and Internet Policy
• Policies Governing the Digital Economy
• Geopolitics, Digital Sovereignty, and Tech Regulation.
Moreover, it offers new, original, and valuable data and analysis for policy scholars including a bibliography of Korean sources of information on usage fees translated and summarized for an English-speaking audience, a formal presentation of Korean content market development over the last decade and reference to international proceedings on the similar topic in other countries as appropriate. 

The paper offers a timely review of the small but emerging literature on the topic of network usage fees and interconnection and the significant literature in Korean on the nation’s broadband policy, which is not necessarily accessed by English language scholars. 
The work is significant because many nations consider whether and how to engage in such regimes and whether market-based or regulated approaches are superior. Proceedings have been undertaken or underway in USA, European Union, Brazil, among other regions.

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Device affordability is one of the key barriers to Internet access and use in most low-and-middle income countries. Reducing and/or eliminating taxes on devices has emerged as a major way to make devices more affordable. However, the empirical evidence on the impact of reducing and/or eliminating tax on device access remains limited. To help fill this gap, this study estimates the impact of Colombia’s 2017 VAT exemption on smartphone penetration rates. Using the Synthetic Control Method (SCM) applied to country-level panel data from 2009 to 2021, our study finds that smartphone penetration in Colombia reached 66.8 percent in 2021. This represents an increase of 7.6 percentage points over the 59.2 percent level of its synthetic counterpart, equivalent to a 12.8 percent relative increase. These results were validated through placebo tests and other robustness checks. These findings confirm that reducing and/or eliminating taxes on smartphones improves smartphone penetration and contributes towards bridging the digital divide. The work can be extended by exploring VAT exemptions in other countries and reductions on other forms of taxes.

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Current economic and political factors, aligned to keep a geopolitical balance of power between the countries that produce telecom equipment – companies such as Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung, Mavenir, NEC and Fujitsu vs. Huawei and ZTE – are providing a challenging battle when it comes to emergent markets in developing countries. Worldwide there are wide arguments that Huawei and ZTE deliver better and cheaper equipment with usually lower rates of borrowing from the Chinese financial service industry. Furthermore, it is implied that other vendors are more expensive and if chosen the cost will hinder the expansion of infrastructure in rural areas.

This paper will present the result of the evaluation of data sourced from both regulators and industry in emerging markets on the choices made by telecom infrastructure providers, when to select or decline a vendor to be a trusted partner. For this purpose, we have reviewed both policy and industry actions in Latin America and the European Economic Area as both are representative of the challenges telecom infrastructure investment confront. Source documents revised in English, Spanish and Portuguese include reports and evaluations for partners section in those two regions.

Our analysis calls for a more careful appreciation of such statements. Instead of focusing just on the pricing of active equipment alone which makes a share of total cost of a radio access site or an end-to-end network, a more comprehensive approach to analysis is to compare the actual difference in costs, taking into consideration all factors, including the coverage, energy efficiency and quality network operations can provide. We also gathered evidence that the saving on buying infrastructure by the operator tends to improve their free cash flow that is not used to buy more equipment or improve coverage, but to increase the share price and dividends to shareholders.

The evidence collected points to some observations that require careful evaluation, take the case for example the comparison of CAPEX vs Sale and indicator of potential scale of impact on end-user prices. The more comprehensive approach in this paper takes into account what does it cost to build infrastructure, how much of that money goes into RAN equipment and how much goes to steel towers, power, and blue collared workers and other costs that are independent of the vendor chosen. There is also a need of determining if it is really the case that the operators in e.g. Latin America or Africa who do not use Chinese equipment have poorer network / coverage, and if it is the case that the operators using Chinese equipment have better networks.

The European Union has elaborated in the last few years policies and restrictions towards privacy and security breaches by Chinese telecom equipment and has successfully enforced on telecom operators’ requirements to include comprehensive estimates (E.g. Costa Rica).

Decision making when it comes to vendors require to make in-depth questions such as: What are the other hidden costs associated with choosing a non-trusted vendor like Huawei or ZTE? The distribution of such costs between the society and private telecom operators of infrastructure is of importance, to understand private companies’ incentives and risk incentives. Furthermore, the issue of trust is very relevant when it comes to choosing partners and short and medium term “savings” in infrastructure development in telecoms are not easy or cheap to rectify once the network is deployed to comply with regulation from countries or regions – such as the European Economic Area - that have objections to networks managed by non-trusted vendors. Hence the so-called benefits can end up taking a significant toll in terms of costs and loans to comply with those requirements.

It is our belief that our main contribution is to provide a framework where all these factors are taken into consideration both regulators and network operators will carefully consider present and future choices of vendors worldwide. Since the goal is to create, deploy and maintain networks that are cost viable, economically profitable, and trusted to provide the privacy and security citizens of democratic countries are entitled to, as these will be the foundation of the evolving digital economy in emerging markets .

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I measure across- and within-household inequalities in the adoption of digital technologies. I leverage nationally representative household surveys in 98 low- and middle-income countries to build a new dataset covering 2,030,308 households surveyed between 2015-2023 – a dataset representative of 4.2 billion of the world’s population. Where feasible, I link household-level surveys with within-household women’s surveys. I then use this dataset to provide harmonised survey-based estimates of mobile phone ownership and use (for financial transactions), computer ownership and use, internet access at the household, and women’s use. I document three patterns: 1) Women’s phone ownership lags household ownership across the wealth distribution, with particularly stark gaps in South Asia. 2) Even when women own phones, their reported use of the internet (ever) or for financial transactions is lower and heterogeneous across low- and middle-income countries. 3) While mobile phones have wide proliferation, computers and internet access are often much poorer.

The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program in the U.S. has directed $42.45 billion in funding to accelerate the development and deployment of broadband infrastructure that meets specific service requirements such as minimum service speeds of 100 Mbps in the downstream and 20 Mbps in the upstream, peak hour latency below 100 ms, and network reliability of no more than 48 hours of outage time over any 365-day period. An often-overlooked element to the development of these requirements are the substantial policy implications they carry for determining preferred local access network technology options, preferred broadband service operators based upon their legacy technology positions, and the overall degree to which the nation’s households are unserved and underserved in terms of broadband access. Moreover, the performance requirements can influence, the design and evolution of the Internet architecture itself by influencing the selection or implementation of protocols and measurement metrics used by broadband network operators. To date in the U.S., Broadband Internet Access Service (BIAS) performance requirements have been developed in a number of different policy efforts such as the FCC’s annual Section 706 inquiries since the 1996 Telecom Act, part of the FCC’s universal service broadband funding programs since the National Broadband Plan (beginning with CAF Phase I and II, ACAM, and then RDOF), or adopted for broadband funding programs passed by Congress (such as Treasury’s Capital Project Fund and now the NTIA’s BEAD program).
This panel will investigate various policy concerns that arise from the lack of a consistent policy framework for defining BIAS performance requirements by addressing the following questions:

1. Prior Efforts to Characterize Performance-Related Policy Concerns.
2. How has Internet Performance Changed Over Time?
3. Increasing Importance of Latency in Internet Performance using Internet Engineering Task Force’s (IETF) Low Latency Low Loss Scalable Throughput (L4S) open standards.
4. Anticipated New Requirements from Emerging Internet Applications.
5. Putting It All Together: How Should Broadband Funding Be Linked to Internet Performance Requirements?

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The focus of this paper is on an economics-based analysis and redesign of mitigation of volumetric Denial-of-Service (DDos) attacks utilizing the initial packets in connection-oriented protocols. These attacks have been documented for decades and their volume and impact have been growing enormously. The contributions of the paper are: (1) a novel evaluation framework based on all of efficacy, threat, overhead, and damage as experienced by applications; (2) a comparison of TCP with SYN Cookies and QUIC with Retries, the two accepted DDoS mitigation approaches in these two transport protocols; (3) evaluation of our alternative proposal to use SYN Proof-of-Work (SYN PoW) to address these volumetric attacks more effectively; and (4) an in-depth discussion of the economics of the various stakeholders in these scenarios. As demonstrated in this work, the SYN PoW type of approach not only moves much of the cost of mitigation onto the attackers, unlike current proposals, but also enables verification of validity of traffic to be handled anywhere in the network, rather than only at the end-points, giving network service providers an additional capability for reducing malicious traffic. A critical contribution is that this type of approach

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Scholarly inquiry has yet to comprehensively explore the impact of Internet connectivity levels on dynamics related to online echo chambers, trust in online social networks (OSNs), and concern by users for algorithmic manipulation. To investigate the relationship between OSN users’ attitudes regarding online echo chambers, trust in OSN platforms, and concerns about algorithmic manipulation and Internet connectivity, we conducted a survey of more than 700 OSN users across diverse contexts. We collected responses from the United States, United Kingdom, India, and South Africa about attitudes and beliefs toward encountering discordant information in online settings. We integrate our survey response data with existing datasets from the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) which indexes infrastructure, affordability, consumer readiness, and content & services to analyze mobile connectivity in a country. Our study reveals marked differences in users’ reported concerns for prevalence of OSN echo chambers, trust in OSNs as a source for news information, and concern for algorithmic manipulation depending on the level of Internet connectivity in various geographic regions. Our findings will aid global policymakers in tailoring policies addressing the aforementioned and related Internet phenomena to suit the specific context of Internet accessibility within the targeted country.

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The Internet has become a critical basic infrastructure for society and the economy. As such, the resilience of the Internet is essential for the functioning and resilience of many sectors of our digital economies. In our increasingly digital society and economy, Internet is a key element of cyber-resilience. Understanding how to assess and promote Internet resilience are important policy challenges. In this paper, we discuss key aspects of the Internet design that differentiate it from other critical infrastructure and that are essential in considering its resiliency. We also explore how to achieve resiliency and provide a series of illustrative examples that reveal the challenges of achieving and measuring Internet resiliency, as well as mechanisms that contribute to it. Finally, we offer our thoughts on the policy challenges and approaches for promoting Internet resiliency.

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Background
Twin transitions, involving digital and sustainable transformations of contemporary societies and economies, have emerged as top priorities in the European Union, and important policy objectives of governments across the globe. For the business community and the economy more broadly, understanding the factors which influence the adoption of digital technologies by firms and linkages of these with sustainable business practices is important to inform policies aimed at fostering these twin transitions. This research paper generates new knowledge on linkages between digitalisation and the adoption of ICT-related sustainability practices across firms, sectors and space. Using firm-level data from Ireland, it examines three research questions:
1. Which firms are more likely to adopt ICT-related sustainability measures?
2. Does digitalisation affect the propensity of firms to adopt ICT-related sustainability measures?
3. What other factors influence the adoption of ICT-related sustainability practices across firms?
In terms of the existing body of evidence on these themes, the research provided in this paper presents a first analysis of linkages between digitalisation and the adoption of ICT-related sustainability practices across firms, sectors and space. It examines the usage of a range of advanced digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) and digital tools such as cloud computing services and software for sharing information within firm by firms in Ireland, and how these in turn relate to the adoption of different ICT-related environmental sustainability measures. The models employed estimate the propensity of firms to adopt a range of ICT-related sustainability measures as a function of digitalisation and other firm capabilities as well as external factors that influence the usage of digital technologies and the adoption of environmental sustainability measures, including for example competition from other firms as proxied by market share and exporting, and skills levels in firms.

Methods
The work is informed by a novel dataset which merges five micro-datasets for the first time. This includes the E-commerce and ICT Surveys for Irish-based enterprises conducted by Ireland’s Central Statistics Office for 2021 and 2022. These data were then merged with information on the same firms from the Census of Industrial Production, the Annual Services Inquiry, and the Business Register. Upon merging all data, and data cleaning, the final sample consists of 846 firms.
We examine the propensity of firms to adopt the following five ICT-related sustainability measures in 2022, whether the:
1. Firm considered the environmental impact of ICT services or ICT equipment
2. Firm employed measures to reduce the amount of paper used for printing and copying
3. Firm employed measures to reduce the energy consumption of ICT equipment
4. Firm disposed of ICT equipment in electronic waste collection or recycling
5. Firm reported keeping ICT equipment within the firm.
These dependent variables are modelled in separate probit regression models as a function of the usage of a range of digital technologies adopted as recorded in 2021, including, whether the firm reported:
1. Being a digital technology user: which is a dummy variable assigned a value of one whether the firm reported using at least one digital technology (Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things) or a digital tool (cloud computing services, software for sharing information electronically with the firm); 0 otherwise
2. An AI user: firm reported use of AI
3. A IoT user: firm reported use of IoT
4. A Cloud computing user: firm reported use of cloud computing services
5. A User of software for sharing information electronically within firm: firm reported use of software for sharing information electronically within the firm; and,
6. The total number of digital technologies used by a firm
The regression models also encompassed a range of control variables captured in 2020, which may be associated with the usage of digital technologies and the adoption of ICT-related sustainability measures, including: market share, log of wage of employee, whether the firm had employed ICT specialists, whether the firm had an ultra-fast internet connection (100 megabytes per second), the log of investment in intangible assets (e.g. R&D), whether the firm was an exporter and whether they were an importer. The models also controlled for sector- and region-specific fixed effects. Unobserved omitted variables associated with the adoption of digital technologies and ICT-related sustainability measures such as managerial quality were assumed to be included in an error term.

Results
Descriptive statistics revealed differences in adoption of ICT-related sustainability factors by firm size, sector and region. The most adopted measures were the disposing of or recycling ICT equipment, while the least adopted measures were measures to reduce the energy consumption of ICT equipment. Regression modelling results demonstrated that the propensity of firms to consider the environmental impact of ICT services and ICT equipment was positively associated with the number of digital technologies used. The findings show that employing AI technologies, having a higher market share, having employees with higher skills, and employing ICT specialists was associated with implementing measures to reduce the consumption of paper for printing and copying. The propensity of firms to adopt measures to reduce the energy consumption of ICT equipment was positively associated with using AI and with firm size.
Turning to results on e-Waste management, the propensity of firms to dispose of or recycle ICT equipment was positively associated with the usage of software for sharing information electronically, employing ICT specialists and investing in intangible assets. In contrast, the propensity of firms to keep ICT equipment within the firm was negatively associated with investment in intangible assets.

Conclusions
The results of this paper add to the existing evidence suggesting that that the adoption of digital technologies and sustainability practices can be complementary strategic business objectives. The research provides novel evidence on the complementarity between the adoption of advanced digital technologies such as AI and IoT and other digital technologies, and the adoption of ICT-related sustainability measures. In terms of policy implications, the evidence suggests that where a wider adoption of ICT-related sustainability measures is desirable, targeted policy measures to incentivize and enable more firms, particularly small and medium sized enterprises, to adopt digital technologies and ICT-related sustainability measures could help foster the twin digital and green transitions. Policies to improve the adoption of sustainability measures by firms may also consider more broad firm factors including the upskilling of employees and employing ICT specialists, investing in research and development and other intangible assets such as computer software and organisational capital.
We note that the cross-sectional nature of the merged dataset makes causal relationships difficult to identify in this research. Furthermore, the data also only include firms with 20 or more persons engaged in the business, which limits the generalisability of the findings for very small or micro enterprises. Moreover, the results rely on self-reported information from firms which may be subject to measurement error and thus could lead to bias in estimations. For example, firms may tend to report greater adoption of sustainability practices to appear ‘greener’.
How digitalisation and sustainability feature in firm decision making and operations is still an emerging academic topic. The use of longitudinal data in future research, and data from other jurisdictions are required to und

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The environmental impact of large tech companies has come under intense scrutiny, particularly as the COVID-19 pandemic and the frenzy about Generative AI have driven increased demand for ICT infrastructures and services. Unsurprisingly, calls for more transparency and the disclosure of sustainability-related metrics by these companies have grown over time. This paper explores the sustainability reporting strategies of large tech firms, with a focus on decarbonization and data centers. We examine critical areas such as greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy usage, and energy efficiency through a longitudinal comparative analysis of sustainability reporting activities from 2003 to 2023. Our sample includes nine leading tech companies from the US (Akamai, Amazon, Apple, Facebook/Meta, Google/Alphabet, Microsoft) and China (Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent). The analysis highlights a convergence among these companies towards publishing dedicated sustainability reports, providing more comprehensive and nuanced insights into supply chains and data centers, and emphasizing carbon neutrality and 100% renewable energy usage. A notable trend is the shift in focus from energy efficiency to renewable energy supply and from operational emissions to value chain emissions. Based on a critical discussion, we offer valuable insights for different stakeholders.

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The introduction of 5G technology has changed the mobile broadband landscape, yielding faster speeds, lower latencies, and potentially more widespread coverage. In this paper, we study the evolution of US cellular technology, with a focus on 5G, from 2021 to 2023 through the lens of Ookla Speedtest performance and cellular infrastructure deployment. Specifically, we analyze how US cellular network coverage and performance evolved during this period, characterizing improvements at multiple geographic granularities, examining differences between urban and rural performance, and evaluating the availability and performance of “Fast 5G.” Then, we investigate the impact of cellular infrastructure, studying the relationship between infrastructure deployment density and network performance and the growth in infrastructure during this time period. Our findings show that, broadly, mobile network performance improved, though the improvement in some states and regions was far greater than in others. For instance, some states show an increase in download speeds of over 200%, while other states show little to no improvement. Cellular deployment density also grew during this period, is approximately 15 to 40 times higher in urban areas than in rural areas, and is strongly correlated with population density. We find that higher cellular deployment density is generally associated with improved network performance; however, the growth in deployment density does not always align with performance gains, as evidenced by weak correlations between increases in density and improvements in performance metrics. We conclude with recommendations about the need for more granular data about cellular technology infrastructure, deployment dates and location data to better inform policymakers about targeted investments in additional cellular infrastructure.

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Digital platforms, which control unique access points to the rich data stored on their servers, have become a “living lab” of real-time information. Scientists and researchers increasingly use platform data for various purposes, such as training machine learning (ML) systems and Natural Language Processing (NLP) models, and for studying diverse fields such as medicine, humanities, and social sciences, including the influence of digital platforms on society. However, researchers increasingly encounter significant barriers, when attempting to access platform data. Although platforms typically lack proprietary rights over the data itself, they exert strong control over its use by imposing digital locks and boilerplate contractual limitations. Faced with the legal risk of potential breach-of-contract lawsuits filed by well-funded platforms, researchers may simply opt to steer clear of platform data research.

This Article proposes private-law-centered solutions to overcome platform data lockout. First, researchers who access and use platform data without explicit permission should be able to contest breach-of-contract claims made against them by claiming copyright preemption. Platform data falls under copyright law, either because it is protected by copyright (such as user-generated-content) or because it constitutes basic "building blocks", such as users’ digital data trails, which are specifically excluded from copyright protection. When platforms robustly ban any reproduction of data, they effectively benefit from quasi-copyright protection, through private ordering, albeit compromising fundamental copyright principles, including fair use. Their contractual claims should, therefore, be preempted by copyright law. Second, courts should facilitate platform data research by narrowly interpreting boilerplate contractual bans on data access. Third, nuisance law may further support platform data research by empowering researchers to demand the removal of technological barriers that hinder access to public, non-proprietary data.

Private law solutions to platform data lockout, however, do not grant researchers an affirmative right to use platform data for research. Legislative action of the type recently pursued by the European Union is required to establish such a Right to Research. This Article therefore concludes by examining regulatory approaches to platform data lockout, concluding that combining private law solutions with regulatory intervention offers the most effective means of adequately facilitating platform data research.

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We use conference presentation data from 1994 through 2022 and publication records of the papers presented to investigate three main questions and their respective subcomponents: (1) Has the time to publication or the frequency of publication in academic journals shifted over time; does either factor vary by subfield or according to journal ranking? (2) Do factors beyond quality, such as gender or community involvement through board membership or journal editing, influence the likelihood of publication? (3) Is a subfield-specific conference necessarily insular, or could it produce publications and policy-driven papers beyond its subfield? Results suggest that the time to publication has decreased somewhat, and this decrease does not vary by field or journal ranking. Gender appears to be a factor in publication in peer-reviewed journals, while network and community ties do not. Finally, we find that most papers presented at TPRC conferences are published in lower-ranking or field journals, which is as expected given the ultimate goal of scholarly research as a means of impacting policy.

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Digital exclusion is a barrier for people on parole, herein referred to as returning citizens. Yet, much remains unknown about the specific issues they encounter. As the world continues to advance technologically, it is important that we understand returning citizens’ access to and use of technology and how it impacts their ability to reintegrate into society. Framed in the Digital Rehabilitation Model, the current study uses qualitative data from 28 returning citizens to explore their digital exclusion across time since release from prison. Findings show that returning citizens released less than a month to 24 months ago more often described technology-related challenges.

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India’s digital divide is analyzed in terms of geographic patterns and socioeconomic influences. Information and communication technology indicators spanning access, skills, use, and infrastructure are mapped and geographic patterns, disparities between states, and agglomerations are analyzed. Clusters of states differ in demographic, educational, and occupational attributes. Regression models reveal that the digital divide in India’s states is influenced by urbanization, agricultural occupation, literacy rate, post graduate education, and scheduled caste population. Concerted efforts to bridge urban-rural digital disparities, gaps in literacy and educational attainment, and alleviate historical marginalization of disadvantaged castes can gradually bridge the digital divide in Indian states.

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Public libraries play a critical role in addressing the digital divide and advancing digital equity in their communities. However, little is known about their participation in local and statewide coalitions to advance digital equity as a public good. The National Digital Inclusion Alliance has defined a coalition as a collective organization of organizations operating in the public realm that function within a collaborative structure. The American Library Association defines a public good as one of the core values of librarianship focused on working to improve society and protect the rights to education, literacy, and intellectual freedom. While existing research has highlighted the important role that libraries play in coalitions, few studies have identified the ways in which public libraries participate in coalitions to advance digital equity as a public good in the U.S. context.

This research sought to address a gap in the literature on public libraries, coalitions, and digital equity, through the following research question: What role(s) do public libraries play in coalitions working to advance digital equity? Participants in this study were recruited to complete an online survey, which was open for a period of two months between February and March in 2024. A total of 28 survey responses were collected during this approximately one-month time period. In analyzing the data, I used descriptive statistics to present key characteristics of the data collected focusing primarily on those survey respondents that identified as working for a public library currently involved with a local, regional, or statewide digital equity coalition. These criteria resulted in a final list of 16 out of 28 total libraries included in the analysis.

The findings from my analysis of the survey data revealed that many public libraries in the U.S. support the public good in three primary ways. This includes: (1) convening and leading digital equity coalitions; (2) participating in coalition action planning and advocacy to advance digital equity; and (3) actively centering equity, as opposed to equality, in their efforts to create and sustain healthy digital equity ecosystems. In addition, public libraries described themselves, in the open-ended survey responses, as key digital literacy partners in digital equity community and statewide coalitions.

This research is novel and relevant to contemporary communications policy particularly in the context of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s Digital Equity Grant programs that were included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021. As part of this federal initiative, NTIA is currently overseeing $2.75 billion to advance digital equity over the next five years. The agency has also recognized that coalitions will play an important role in the success of this federal initiative. The findings from this study can help to inform state broadband and digital equity offices that will be implementing this funding, particularly regarding seeing public libraries as key partners in coalitions to support this national digital equity initiative.

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More than one-fifth of the US population does not subscribe to a fixed broadband service despite broadband being a recognized merit good. For example, less than 4% of citizens earning more than US $70k annually do not have broadband, compared to 26% of those earning below US $20k annually. To address this, the Federal Government has undertaken one of the largest broadband investment programs ever via The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, with the aim of addressing this disparity and expanding broadband connectivity to all citizens. We examine broadband availability, adoption, and need for each US state, and then construct an Input-Output model to explore the potential macroeconomic impacts of broadband spending on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and supply chain linkages. Our analysis indicates that higher funding allocations appear to be allocated to areas with poorer broadband. While this may be logical, as it illustrates funding going to areas most in need, this could not have been assumed a priori given politically-motivated funding is not always rationally allocated. In terms of macroeconomic impact, the total potential indirect contribution to US GDP by the program could be as high as US $84.8 billion, $32.7 billion, and $9.78 billion for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program, the Affordable Connectivity Program, and additional programs, respectively. Thus, overall, the broadband allocations could expand US GDP by up to $127.3 billion (0.10% of annual US GDP over the next five years). We contribute one of the first economic impact assessments of the US Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to the literature.