Broadband

Congress has allocated more than $42 billion to bridge the “digital divide,” but that effort risks failing because the federal BEAD program encourages states to overspend on high-end fiberoptic infrastructure.

Congress has allocated $42.5 billion to bridge America’s digital divide through the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program. To achieve that goal, states and territories must carefully craft plans to use their shares of the funds to the greatest possible benefit.

This visualization tool applies letter grades to states' plans to utilize the $42.5 billion allocated by Congress to the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program.

Available from Amazon and other booksellers: Technologies and tech companies are accused of creating a myriad of societal problems. Technology Fears and Scapegoats exposes them as mostly myths, falsehoods, and exaggerations. It issues a clarion call to restore the West’s faith in technological progress.

Brief of the International Center for Law & Economics and ITIF as amici curiae in support of petitioners and setting aside the Commission’s Order. The digital discrimination rule the FCC issued in its order is inconsistent with the IIJA. It is so expansive as to claim regulatory authority over major political and economic questions, and it is arbitrary and capricious.

Spectrum auction authority and ACP extension have been difficult policy problems for over a year now. There is room for mutually reinforcing solutions to both, but that delicate balance should ensure that we don’t trade away long-term ACP sustainability.

Digital literacy is now a necessary skill on par with the ability to read or write. Yet, we have no clear system of measuring this type of literacy rate or comprehensive dataset that tells us where the U.S. population stands. Instead, there’s a piecemeal landscape of measuring digital literacy. Studies often cover members of particular groups rather than the population at large, and without a consensus on the measurement of universal digital literacy rates, we have no clear way of taking a data-driven approach to the problem—which is necessary if we want to solve it.

There is no more important broadband policy goal than realizing the benefits of connectivity for all Americans. The draft item’s decision to reclassify broadband as a Title II service is counterproductive to those values, and an FCC that prioritizes connectivity and the public interest would not adopt it.

The Federal Communications Commission’s proposal proceeding to reclassify broadband Internet access service as a Title II common carrier service endangers the success of the U.S. broadband ecosystem and the long-term benefits of connectivity to all Americans.

A November 2023 working paper found that a 10 percent increase in digital connectivity reduced trade costs by about 1.5–2 percent.