Rural Measures: A Quantitative Study of the Rural Digital Divide

Rural areas continue to face digital inequality compared to urban areas. Urban areas have access to a myriad of next generation advanced information communications technology (ICT) whereas rural areas experience disparity of service type, price and reliability. Initially the urban-rural digital divide was one of quantity of subscribers or demand driven digital inclusion , it has now matured to become an issue of quality and capacity of connectivity. However, Silva, Badasyan & Busby found that the more rural a census tract is, the lower the broadband adoption rate. They found, in further testament to the need for increased capacity, that “broadband availability has the strongest impact on the adoption rate in non-metropolitan areas. If the availability were to increase to a 100%....it would increase the adoption rate by 6.12%”. Public policy and regulation has a direct impact upon availability or lack thereof for ICT services in rural areas. Hollifield, Donnermeyer, Wolford & Agunga found that when public policy, in the form of universal service funding in rural high cost areas, failed to support the early implementation of ICT services, communities began investing in self-development projects with limited success. This effort however, doesn’t address the circumstances of the rural household miles from an organized rural community. With the regulatory focus on increasing competition among ICT service providers since the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, consumers in urban areas have benefited. In contrast, underserved or unserved rural consumers of ICT often pay a rural penalty in the form of a combination of one or more complicating factors, including; higher prices and lower bandwidth , and less reliability or no service at all. Whitacre & Mills reports several early studies pointed to the need for demand-oriented programs such as computer training, and demonstrations on internet usage, as more important than the development of access infrastructure to promote ICT usage in rural areas. However, as general societal demand for internet access grows from the diffusion of knowledge, infrastructure becomes the limiting factor in the development of rural areas. Lower population density areas are minimally (or un)profitable markets for ICT service providers and some areas may never experience for-profit investment in broadband provisioning due to the lack of a potential subscriber base. During the years of the traditional land-line telephone, high cost rural areas were supported by the federal universal service fund through subsidies paid by all users, rural and urban. This fund, reformulated as the Connect America Fund, was intended to take over this role in the new ICT economy, but has fell short of fulfilling its intended purpose. Additionally concerns exist with the measurement and reporting of the diffusion of broadband infrastructure. All facilities based service providers providing internet connection speeds exceeding 200 kbps must report bandwidth speeds to the Federal Communication Commission through form 477. Reporting of available bandwidth speeds initially occurred by zip code, and then by census tract, followed by a further adjustment to the level of census block, making longitudinal comparisons over multiple years difficult. Since 2014 broadband adoption rates are reported on the basis of a scale from 0 to 5 with 5 meaning over 800 broadband connections per 1,000 households. This is a problematic measurement methodology for low population density areas. Grubesic reports as of the first iteration of the national broadband map, the availability of broadband in the United States is overestimated. Both public policy and available technologies directly affect regional development. Salemink, Strijker & Bosworth has concluded that economic differences between “well-connected” and “poorly connected” areas will continue to grow. Mahasuweerachai, Whitacre, & Shideler concluded that rural counties with both digital subscriber line (DSL) and cable broadband technologies attracted a net positive number of in-migrations as compared to counties without broadband or with only one type of broadband. Salemink, Strijker & Bosworth further concludes that while not instrumental for economic growth in rural areas, digital connectivity is essential to support existing industries. Gallardo and Schmmahorn found that as the number of broadband providers increased, so did non-innovative entrepreneurs and as non-innovative entrepreneurs increased, income inequality decreased. A need exists for the accurate measurement and reporting of consumer available bandwidth to better understand this element of the urban-rural digital divide. The primary question for this research study is, can the rural-urban digital divide be accurately measured? To address this question and to better understand available ICT in a given region, two pilot studies have been performed in households to measure consumer available bandwidth and to ascertain multiple elements of consumer perceptions of their internet access. These pilot projects focused on two themes of digital connectivity issues as outlined by Salemink, Strijker & Bosworth including; policy and regulation, and technologies in rural areas.