Broadband

ITIF’s spring seminar course explores core emerging technologies and issues that are reshaping our world and, in the process, creating public policy challenges and opportunities. The course is open to congressional staff only.

Join ITIF for a panel discussion featuring submarine cable owners and operators as they delve into the past, present, and future of this essential industry. Learn about the technological advances, policy challenges, and global implications shaping the world beneath the waves.

Please join ITIF for a virtual panel discussion with technology policy experts who will highlight and critique the most counterproductive tech policies of the past year, and consider how the incoming administration and Congress can turn the page.

Congress should create a more targeted and durable Affordable Connectivity Program by aligning funding priorities with the remaining causes of the digital divide. By prioritizing affordability rather than deployment, the new program can connect low-income households without new federal spending.

Consumers would benefit directly from more capable spectrum use and commercial offerings, and the home and mobile broadband markets would benefit from a more capable competitor.

Nevada’s broadband plan wastes millions on overpriced fiber projects, ignoring cost-effective solutions like satellite service and neglecting affordability—the real driver of the digital divide.

In most cases, local governments have neither the competence nor the economies of scale to deliver broadband as well as private ISPs. So, favoring government-owned networks wastes societal resources, creates unfair competition, and is frequently unsustainable in the long run.

Private ISPs have invested the equivalent of 2 BEAD programs every year since the BEAD statute was enacted.

To the extent that the Commission is worried about whether data caps are too low, it should change its policies that have disincentivized broadband investment so consumers can benefit from increases in overall broadband network capacity.

The FCC will likely lose its partisan bid to regulate broadband Internet service under Title II of the Communications Act, either under the major questions doctrine or under the normal principles of statutory interpretation. That eventual decision will confirm it would have been better off focusing on policies that actually benefit consumers.