Reports

When the study, Reevaluating the Broadband Bonus: Evidence from Neighborhood Access to Fiber and United States Housing Prices, was written in 2015, only one in 11 households in the United States had Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) connections, according to a 2014 Broadband Communities primer, but that has changed as more and more studies have shown the economic benefits of fiber. The Fiber To The Home Council Americas funded a study in conjunction with the University of Colorado and Carnegie Mellon that showed a fiber dividend of $5,437 on a $175,000 home. Fierce Telecom reported on the results:

The boost to the value of a typical home – $5,437 – is roughly equivalent to adding a fireplace, half of a bathroom or a quarter of a swimming pool to the home.

Download the entire 2015 study here.

The FCC collects data from Internet Service Providers that reflects census blocks where they offer service to at least one premise. Currently, the Commission does not collect information about rates subscribers pay. A new report from the Berkman Klein Center dives into prices subscribers pay and also looks at trends from national companies as well as local publicly owned networks. The report, Community-Owned Fiber Networks: Value Leaders in America, supports what we’ve always found — that publicly owned networks offer the best all around value for the communities that make the investment. Download the report.

Rural communities across the United States are already building the Internet infrastructure of the future. Using a 20th century model, rural America is finding a way to tap into high-speed Internet service: electric and telephone cooperatives are bringing next-generation, Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) networks to their service territories. This policy brief provides an overview of the work that cooperatives have already done, including a map of the cooperatives' fiber service territories. We also offer recommendations on ways to help cooperatives continue their important strides.

Download the policy brief, Cooperatives Fiberize Rural America: A Trusted Model For The Internet Era here.

As the company with one of the largest ISPs in the nation, Comcast Corporation makes daily investment decisions. They choose to put company funds into a variety of ventures, from theme parks to hair color; all that matters is that the investment pays off. During the 2017 election season, Comcast once again devoted funds to an investment it considered necessary - influencing elections in Seattle and Fort Collins, Colorado. We prepared a policy brief to look deeper into Comcast's investment into the elections.

Download the brief here: Comcast Spends Big on Local Elections: Would Lose Millions in Revenue from Real Broadband Competition.

As Ammon, Idaho, celebrated the official launch of its publicly owned open access network on October 5th, 2017, the folks from Harvard University’s Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH), shared Ammon’s story in their new report. Enabling Competition and Innovation on a City Fiber Network, by Paddy Leerssen and David Talbot provides the details of the community’s pioneering network that uses technology to increase competition for the benefit of citizens.

Next Century Cities’ “Emerging Issues in Expanding Next-Generation Internet Access: 2017 Policy Agenda” offers recommendations to local communities that want to improve and expand local connectivity. This policy agenda looks at some of the most recent issues facing cities and examines ways they’ve faced the challenges. Many of the examples in the policy agenda come from communities that are members of Next Century Cities.

A new case study recently released by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University describes how the community of Concord, Massachusetts deployed its extensive municipal fiber-optic network and smart grid. In Citizens Take Charge: Concord, Massachusetts, Builds a Fiber Network, the authors offer history, and describe the benefits to the community from better connectivity and enhanced electric efficiencies.

As federal agencies examine the AT&T - Time Warner merger, how we analyze antitrust also needs to be reevaluated - especially in the telecommunications industry. A new report from the Roosevelt Institute takes a closer look at how antitrust enforcement philosophy has changed and how that change has enabled the current state of telecommunications in which a few large anticompetitive players control the market. The authors offer recommendations and cautionary predictions that may arise if we continue without reassessing how we scrutinize these large scale mergers.

The report notes how scrutiny of mergers has come to depend on the perceived harm the results will have on consumers, but such a narrow focus results in harming competition.

Instead, regulators should adopt a more holistic view of market power, specifically incorporating analysis of upstream impact of anticompetitive behaviors, especially those enabled by mergers. This would entail closer scrutiny of vertical mergers, positive price discrimination, and non-price-based schemes to profit excessively by withholding access to consumers.

A new article from the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society takes a look at the pay in and pay off from Chattanooga’s investment into its fiber-optic network. The article, Smart Grid Paybacks: The Chattanooga Example, was written by Davd A. Talbot and Maria Paz-Canales.

A growing number of U.S. cities have broken up monopoly control of the Internet marketplace locally. They're promoting entrepreneurship while giving residents and businesses real choice in how they connect and reach new audiences. They've put a new wrinkle in an old model: the public-private partnership.

"Communities desperately need better Internet access, but not all local governments are bold enough to 'go it alone'", says Christopher Mitchell with Community Broadband Networks at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. "Here, we've outlined a few remarkable cities who have demonstrated how smart strategies are helping them help themselves."

A city that builds its own fiber and leases it to a trusted partner can negotiate for activities that benefit the public good, like universal access. It may even require (as Westminster, Maryland did) that the partner ISP have real human beings answer the phone to solve a customer's problems.

The term "public-private partnership" has been muddied in the past. This report clears up the confusion: public entities and private companies must both have "skin in the game" to balance the risks and amplify the rewards.

Inside The Report

In its first two years of implementation, the Minnesota Border-to-Border program distributed $30 million to 31 rural Minnesota communities. But the state has not put enough money into the program and needs to put more focus on getting investment in Greater Minnesota cities to spur economic development.

“This funding is essential to greater Minnesota communities that are being left behind,” says Christopher Mitchell, Director of the Community Broadband Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. “The current disbursement is only meeting a fraction of the state’s high-speed Internet needs as it is. The program’s rules must be reconsidered to meet economic development goals for the state.”

"Getting the Rules Right" is a policy brief on the Border-to-Border Broadband program. It covers what the program is, how it works, and why funding must be expanded in order to serve more greater Minnesota communities.

Download the Report here [pdf]