Does Broadband Matter for Rural Entrepreneurs or 'Creative Class' Employees?

Broadband, or high-speed Internet, has changed the way our society operates; yet there are still parts of rural America where the connection is lagging behind. Closing the �digital divide� is still a priority on rural America�s agenda, with government policies focusing on providing broadband infrastructure to unserved (or underserved) areas. An unanswered question, however, is whether a relationship exists between broadband availability and the existence of entrepreneurs or �creative class� workers in rural communities. These types of workers have been shown to be particularly important for economic growth in rural areas. One relevant hypothesis is that some threshold related to broadband exists (a specific download speed, or number of providers) that is positively related to the existence of rural entrepreneurs; such a finding would have meaningful implications for future U.S. broadband policy. This research explores this relationship using county-level data from the 2012 National Broadband Map and measures of entrepreneurship and creative class employees from the Census and ERS. Spatial econometric tools are used to assess the cross-section relationship as of 2012. First-differenced regressions are also used to determine whether increasing levels of broadband have influenced changes in entrepreneurship or creative class employees in rural areas over time. Results indicate wired broadband availability is important to entrepreneurs in rural areas. The opposite is true for creative class employees in rural areas � broadband adoption, and wired/ wireless availability actually has a negative influence. These results suggest that the direction is not always positive, which is an interesting finding and one that should be taken into account as specific rural development policies are developed.Agricultural Economic

Push Them Forward: Challenges in Intergovernmental Organizations\u27 Influence on Rural Broadband Infrastructure Expansion

Many rural US communities lack access to adequate broadband services. This paper draws on semi-structured interviews conducted in 2019 with 16 Regional Planning Commissions to uncover dynamics of how these intergovernmental organizations contribute to the deployment of broadband infrastructure in rural Missouri. The proposed framework integrates the decomposed Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), the Theory of Reasoned Goal Pursuit, and Stakeholder Theory. Many participants reported a low level of involvement in broadband infrastructure initiatives even though supporting infrastructure development to promote economic growth is one of the Regional Planning Commissions\u27 primary goals. Regional Planning Commissions are highly influenced by four primary stakeholder groups, (1) residents and businesses, (2) local governments, (3) internet service providers, and (4) state and federal government, which vary in terms of priorities and power. While defining the region\u27s priorities with elected officials, Regional Planning Commissions often push them forward to recognize the necessity of broadband infrastructure. However, Regional Planning Commissions also struggle with low self-efficacy and inadequate expertise to support broadband planning efforts. The proposed framework could be generalized to understand actions and decisions by other intergovernmental organizations that have convening power and face similar power dynamics with their stakeholders

Evaluating the Impact of Broadband Access and Internet Use in a Small Underserved Rural Community

Having adequate access to the internet at home enhances quality-of-life for households and facilitates economic and social opportunities. Despite increased investment in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of households in the rural United States still lack adequate access to high-speed internet. In this study, we evaluate a wireless broadband network deployed in Turney, a small, underserved rural community in northwest Missouri. In addition to collecting survey data before and after this internet intervention, we collected pre-treatment and post-treatment survey data from comparison communities to serve as a control group. Due to technical constraints, some of Turney\u27s interested participants could not connect to the network, creating an additional comparison group. These comparisons suggest two primary findings, (1) changes in using the internet for employment, education, and health could not be directly attributed to the internet intervention, and (2) the internet intervention was associated with benefits stemming from the ability to use multiple devices at once. This study has implications for the design of future broadband evaluation studies, particularly those examining underserved rather than unserved communities. Recommendations for identifying appropriate outcome variables, executing recruitment strategies, and selecting the timing of surveys are made

Evaluating the Impact of Broadband Access and Internet Use in a Small Underserved Rural Community

Having adequate access to the internet at home enhances quality-of-life for households and facilitates economic and social opportunities. Despite increased investment in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of households in the rural United States still lack adequate access to high-speed internet. In this study, we evaluate a wireless broadband network deployed in Turney, a small, underserved rural community in northwest Missouri. In addition to collecting survey data before and after this internet intervention, we collected pre-treatment and post-treatment survey data from comparison communities to serve as a control group. Due to technical constraints, some of Turney\u27s interested participants could not connect to the network, creating an additional comparison group. These comparisons suggest two primary findings, (1) changes in using the internet for employment, education, and health could not be directly attributed to the internet intervention, and (2) the internet intervention was associated with benefits stemming from the ability to use multiple devices at once. This study has implications for the design of future broadband evaluation studies, particularly those examining underserved rather than unserved communities. Recommendations for identifying appropriate outcome variables, executing recruitment strategies, and selecting the timing of surveys are made

Three Essays on Broadband Adoption

This dissertation focuses on three issues surrounding broadband internet adoption. The first study examines the recent shift to mobile-only internet connections. The percentage of mobile-only households increased from 9% in 2011 to 20% in 2015, more than doubling in only four years. As this shift continues, it leads to the question of what factors are driving the rise in mobile-only adoption. Using nationally representative data, this study uses logistic regressions and a decomposition technique to understand the trend. The decomposition reveals that a significant portion of the growth was due to an increase in the download speeds of mobile networks. An increased acceptance of mobile-only access by households aged 55 and older was also partly responsible. Understanding (and developing a response to) the trend towards mobile-only adoption will be important as organizations and governments continue to work to close the digital divide.The second study examines the effectiveness of a well-known grassroots broadband adoption oriented program, Connected Nation. While a large number of studies have examined policies and programs aimed at increasing infrastructure, little analysis to date has focused on evaluating efforts to increase adoption. This analysis focuses on the effectiveness of Connected Nation's efforts by evaluating its impact on adoption rates using a generalized difference-in-difference methodology. While the results indicate there was no significant initial impact, there is evidence of a linear effect resulting in increased adoption 2 to 4 years after the program began. This paper represents a rigorous evaluation of one of the most well-known adoption-oriented programs, and emphasizes that effective use of broadband funds should include empirical analysis of what woks.The third study examines the need for a measure of inequality for broadband adoption. Broadband adoption is primarily measured as the percentage of a population with a connection, regardless of the modality used (i.e. fixed, mobile, or both). This results in a binary measurement that distinguishes between two groups: the percentage that have the defined level of access and those that do not. However, this measure fails to capture differences that may exists in ow users connect – for example, those who use both mobile and fixed versus those use mobile only. This article proposes the use of the absolute value index (AVI) as a measure to study broadband adoption inequality. Using nationally representative data, adoption is broken into four types of connections (none, mobile, fixed, both) to compile the AVI. This measure of inequality may better represent the disparities associated with broadband use across the country, particularly as mobile internet use rises. The results indicate that the AVI can be useful in differentiating adoption patterns (i.e. mobile vs. fixed) in states with similar aggregate levels of adoption. Two nonnested hypothesis tests formally explore the explanatory power of the two measures in explaining economic relationships commonly associated with broadband adoption, and conclude that the AVI does not capture any additional information.Agricultural Economic

The Growth of the Broadband Internet Access Market in California: Deployment, Competition, Adoption, and Challenges for Policy

This report examines the great progress made in availability and adoption in the broadband market over the past few decades and shows how Californian residents and businesses have come to use broadband widely. The policy issues involved with continuing the tremendous strides already made are discussed, along with recommendations for policy-makers. The report begins by documenting the rapid growth of Internet usage in the U.S. and California. There is a review of the current state of competition in voice and broadband markets, discussing the decline of traditional telephone service, which is rapidly approaching irrelevance, and the rise of wireless and Internet services. California consumers dropped one in five of their remaining traditional voice lines in 2013, leaving only 9 percent residential voice lines in California as traditional POTS lines. As of the first half of 2014, 47 percent of U.S. households relied only on wireless phones. The report discusses policy issues of availability and adoption of broadband. Since availability is nearly ubiquitous, policy focus should switch to the remaining barriers to adoption. State and federal policy toward universal service (CASF, CAF, Lifeline) is reviewed. The report presents detailed statistics on the availability of broadband in California. Growth in availability since 1999 to today’s nearly ubiquitous coverage is presented. Broadband has been growing at an annualized rate of 30.4 percent since 1999 and more than 130 broadband providers have entered the market in the state. Mobile broadband now accounts for 70 percent of broadband connections. The data show rapidly increasing quality of service, with speeds rising from 7 Mbps in 2008 to 55 Mbps in 2015. Over the same time period, there was a significant decline in the quality-adjusted price for broadband, from $12.89/Mbps in 2008 to$3.42 in 2015. The report concludes with policy recommendations to expand broadband access and adoption, including deploying low cost options to achieve broadband parity, coordinating state and federal rural access subsidies to prevent waste, and updating state and federal Lifeline programs to support broadband. Other policy implications discussed include the need to remove barriers to deploying broadband infrastructure such as access to municipal rights of way, and retargeting CASF funds to unserved (rather than underserved) areas. A brief version of this report is available as Paper 62 (http://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/sppworkingpapers/62)

Evaluating barriers to and impacts of rural broadband access

The lack of adequate broadband infrastructure persists in many rural communities. Beyond funding, additional barriers persist, such as digital literacy and community-level self-efficacy. As a result, the first contribution articulates barriers at the organizational level. This work proposes a framework based on the Theory of Planned Behavior to highlight stakeholder dynamics that have constrained Regional Planning Commissions from advancing broadband infrastructure in rural areas. One approach to address these barriers is to provide stakeholders with analytical tools to evaluate the benefits and costs of various broadband options for their community since there is not a one-size-fits-all solution. To this end, there are three contributions that provide guidance for evaluating improved broadband access. The first solution proposes a benefit-cost analysis at the county-level where changes in tax revenue are used to monetize the impact of rural broadband for a hypothetical Midwest county. The second solution demonstrates a method for evaluating the benefit of broadband in terms of social impact on education, employment, and healthcare in a small under-served community in northwest Missouri. Pre- and post-survey data were used to conduct comparisons between the targeted community, which received faster internet, and control communities. The third solution describes a socio-technical reference architecture to support the development of community-driven wireless broadband projects. By providing analytical tools for evaluating the impact of broadband solutions for rural communities, this research increases the capability of local communities to identify and advocate for broadband solutions that fit their needs --Abstract, page iv

Rural Aging: The Geographic Reach of Service Access in Utah, Identifying Barriers and Solutions

This dissertation includes two studies of rural age-related services in the state of Utah. The first study combines geospatial, demographic data (number of people over 55) and age-related services (hospitals, hospice providers, nursing homes, senior centers, and Areas Agencies on Aging) at the county level and census-tract level to determine localized differences in proportional access to age-related services. Higher and lower proportions are then predicted by contextual factors including rural/urban gradient, economic industry, and broadband access. Results demonstrate that broadband access was significantly associated with higher access to age-related services, but being a retirement destination (increase in people over 65 in county from 2000-2010) was associated with lower spatial access to age-related services. The second study involved in-depth interviews with stakeholders from communities across Utah, and qualitative analysis to identify specific barriers to age-related service access in their communities. This approach generated knowledge about challenges to accessing services and stakeholder-supported starting points and solutions for overcoming some of the identified barriers to age-related services in these communities. Taken together, the spatial data and responses from persons living and serving older adults in rural communities complement an understanding of facilitators and barriers to service access, paired with solutions

The sickening truth of the digital divide: Digital health reforms and digital inequality.

The use of digital technology has become increasingly commonplace within the United Kingdom, with many public services, including healthcare, becoming ‘digital by default’ in response to COVID-19 pandemic and pledged government objectives. Digital healthcare delivery has shown to be a beneficial mode of delivery, yet it is unclear whether the benefits of digital healthcare are experienced evenly throughout society. Individuals from lower income households, individuals residing in areas with poor digital infrastructure, and individuals without adequate digital skills are at risk of being excluded from digital healthcare. It is imperative that the determinants of digital inequality are addressed to ensure that vulnerable members of society can assess healthcare that is increasingly being delivered digitally. To achieve this, stakeholders spanning many sectors should collaborate to understand and address the impact that digital inequality has upon health inequality. Keywords: digital healthcare, digital divide, health transformation, health equity, health inequalit

Estimating Willingness-to-pay for Broadband Attributes among Low-income Consumers: Results from the Fcc Lifeline Pilot Projects

Recent studies have confirmed that broadband adoption (as opposed to simply having access to broadband infrastructure) is positively linked with economic growth. In light of this, federal policy efforts have switched from focusing mainly on the provision of infrastructure to more explicit adoption-oriented efforts. One of those efforts was the Federal Communications Commissions (FCC?s) Low-income Broadband Lifeline Pilot Projects, which ran from 2012 to 2013. The program worked with 14 private telecommunications firms to subsidize household broadband adoption for low-income households by providing discounted monthly and equipment costs. Low-income households are an important component of the broadband adoption puzzle: between 2003 and 2013, the adoption gap between low-income and high-income households actually increased by 5 percentage points. Further, the most recent data suggests that only half of households making less than $25,000 have a residential connection as compared to 95$100,000. Thus, if increasing broadband adoption is a policy goal, focusing on low-income households is a good starting point. This paper focuses on three specific FCC Broadband Lifeline Pilot projects (Nexus, Puerto Rico Telephone Company, and National Telecommunications Cooperative Association) that allowed consumers to make choices among different options, such as data allowance, speed, and wireless vs. wired connections. Conditional logit models are used to develop estimates of consumer?s willingness-to-pay for specific broadband attributes. The results indicate that low-income consumers have a preference for smartphone connections (versus aircards) � and that this effect is even more pronounced for those households earning less than $20,000; that low-income consumers have a preference for wired connections (vs. wireless); and that there is evidence that low-income consumers are willing to pay for an extra GB of data each month � but not for the speed of their connection. These results will be useful for the future versions of the Broadband Lifeline Program. In particular, understanding the willingness-to-pay for specific broadband attributes among low-income households will be useful as the federal program defines its baseline. Effective policies built on these results should lessen the adoption gap between different levels of household income and potentially impact the larger economy.Agricultural Economic