Mapping and Measuring the Information Society: A Social Science Perspective on the Opportunities, Problems and Prospects of Broadband Internet Data in the United States

Broadband Access, District Policy, and Student Opportunities for Remote Learning During COVID-19 School Closures

“…We used the two most common measures estimating access to high-speed broadband in the United States (Mack et al, 2019). The first captures county-level estimated broadband availability , that is, the estimated percentage of a county’s population with at least one provider offering fixed high-speed broadband services at their home, as reported by the FCC (2019).…”

“…These measures have important limitations. Both measures obscure access issues within geographic units, and neither captures broadband quality or cost (Mack et al, 2019). Because the FCC counts a census block as having availability if at least one person in that block can purchase high-speed broadband, these estimates represent the maximum extent of broadband availability in a community (TACIR, 2021).…”

Evaluating the impact of broadband access and internet use in a small underserved rural community

“…Further, most studies to date have estimated the impact of broadband access and adoption in the United States aggregated at national and state levels ( Mack, 2019 ; Mack et al, 2019 ; see Whitacre & Gallardo (2022) for a meta-analysis of availability and adoption studies). Moving forward, this will shift with access to higher resolution broadband fabric data ( Whitacre & Biedny, 2022 ).…”