Increasing low-income broadband adoption through private incentives

Gregory L. Rosston and Scott J. Wallsten

Telecommunications Policy, 2020, vol. 44, issue 9

Abstract: We evaluate a program by a private Internet Service Provider (ISP) intended to encourage low-income households to subscribe to broadband internet service. As part of its approval of the Comcast-NBCU merger in 2011, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandated a “voluntary commitment” by Comcast to introduce a low-income broadband program that Comcast has branded “Internet Essentials (IE).” We use data from the U.S. Census Current Population Survey (CPS) and the National Broadband Map and a differences-in-differences approach to evaluate the program's effects on subscription rates for eligible households.

Keywords: Broadband; Demand; Low-income subsidy; Telecommunications; Elasticity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308596120301129
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:telpol:v:44:y:2020:i:9:s0308596120301129

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30471/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... /30471/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.telpol.2020.102020

Access Statistics for this article

Telecommunications Policy is currently edited by Erik Bohlin

More articles in Telecommunications Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().