The Efficacy of the Connect America Fund in Addressing US Internet Access Inequities

TL;DR

This study critically evaluates the Connect America Fund's effectiveness in reducing US internet access disparities, revealing significant gaps between reported and actual broadband availability and limited success in reaching underserved rural communities.

Contribution

It introduces a novel dataset combining ISP-reported and advertised broadband plans to assess CAF's real-world impact on broadband access and speed in underserved areas.

Findings

Serviceability rate is only 55%, dropping to 18% in some states.

Compliance rate with FCC speed threshold is only 33%.

Some CAF-funded addresses receive higher speeds than neighbors.

Abstract

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%, dropping to as low as 18% in some states. Additionally, the 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%. We also observe that in a subset of census blocks, 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.