The Efficacy of the Connect America Fund in Addressing US Internet Access Inequities
CoRR(2024)
摘要
Residential fixed broadband internet access in the United States (US) has
long been distributed inequitably, drawing significant attention from
researchers and policymakers. This paper evaluates the efficacy of the Connect
America Fund (CAF), a key policy intervention aimed at addressing disparities
in US internet access. CAF subsidizes the creation of new regulated broadband
monopolies in underserved areas, aiming to provide comparable internet access,
in terms of price and speed, to that available in urban regions. Oversight of
CAF largely relies on data self-reported by internet service providers (ISPs),
which is often questionable. We use the broadband-plan querying tool (BQT) to
curate a novel dataset that complements ISP-reported information with
ISP-advertised broadband plan details (download speed and monthly cost) on
publicly accessible websites. Specifically, we query advertised broadband plans
for 687k residential addresses across 15 states, certified as served by ISPs to
regulators. Our analysis reveals significant discrepancies between ISP-reported
data and actual broadband availability. We find that the serviceability
rate-defined as the fraction of addresses ISPs actively serve out of the total
queried, weighted by the number of CAF addresses in a census block group-is
only 55
compliance rate-defined as the weighted fraction of addresses where ISPs
actively serve and advertise download speeds above the FCC's 10 Mbps
threshold-is only 33
CAF-funded addresses receive higher broadband speeds than their monopoly-served
neighbors. These results indicate that while a few users have benefited from
this multi-billion dollar program, it has largely failed to achieve its
intended goal, leaving many targeted rural communities with inadequate or no
broadband connectivity.
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