What We Know And What We Don't Know

Episode Summary

Executive Summary: The hosts reviewed the 2021 tech policy landscape, focusing on the $1.9 trillion stimulus’ many broadband-related programs, the challenge of measuring “progress” on the digital divide, the need for better evaluation and cost discipline, and a rapidly shifting antitrust debate. They argued that spending is outpacing analysis, broadband definitions are arbitrary and moving, and antitrust reform may be driven more by politics than consumer benefit.

Main Topics: Stimulus broadband funding and fragmented spending (Priority: 5/5): The discussion unpacked multiple broadband-related pots in the American Rescue Plan, including emergency broadband support, devices, connectivity funds, and state/local infrastructure aid. The hosts emphasized how difficult it is to track overlapping programs and determine whether they are effective. Whether broadband policy is actually making progress (Priority: 5/5): The hosts debated how to define and measure progress in closing digital divides. They argued that absent a clear definition of 'adequate broadband' and broader metrics like latency, reliability, and in-home Wi‑Fi, claims of progress or failure are hard to assess. Need for evaluation, data, and cost discipline (Priority: 5/5): A recurring theme was that policymakers focus on increasing spending rather than studying outcomes or lowering costs. The speakers argued for rigorous evaluation, better data collection, and more attention to cost-effectiveness in broadband programs. E-rate, school connectivity, and pandemic-era device distribution (Priority: 4/5): The conversation focused on E-rate and the new emergency connectivity funding for students, teachers, and libraries, including off-campus access. They noted that many districts already distributed Chromebooks/hotspots during the pandemic, but the results were not systematically studied. TPI’s broadband mapping/dashboard effort (Priority: 4/5): Sarah Oh described TPI’s web-based dashboard that aggregates FCC, census, USF, speed-test, and other data to answer broadband mapping and subsidy questions. It is presented as a response to gaps in public data tools and government mapping capacity. Antitrust reform and the shift away from consumer welfare (Priority: 5/5): The hosts turned to the new antitrust reform movement, describing it as a rapid turn away from the Chicago-school/consumer-welfare framework toward a more interventionist approach that emphasizes market power, competitors, and structural concerns. Politics and implementation uncertainty in antitrust (Priority: 4/5): They questioned whether antitrust reform is popular enough to translate into legislation, given the public’s reliance on large tech firms and the uncertainty around key personnel appointments at the FTC and DOJ.

Key Arguments: Broadband policy is being funded through multiple overlapping federal pots, making it difficult to track spending or know what is working. There is no agreed-upon definition of 'adequate broadband,' so metrics like 100/100 can obscure progress rather than clarify it. Speed alone is an incomplete measure; latency, packet loss, uptime, reliability, and in-home Wi‑Fi quality also matter. The policy debate over broadband is skewed toward more spending instead of finding cheaper ways to deliver better service. Past broadband programs have lacked rigorous evaluation; more research should assess what programs and allocation methods actually produce benefits. Reverse auctions and competitive bidding can potentially improve efficiency and deliver more bang for the buck than grants or formula allocations. E-rate and emergency connectivity funds may help extend school connectivity into homes, but this raises unanswered questions about privacy, filtering, and how schools manage off-campus access. TPI’s dashboard aims to fill a major public-data and mapping gap by combining multiple datasets and enabling geographic analysis and regressions. The antitrust reform movement has advanced unusually quickly and seeks to unwind much of the consumer-welfare-oriented framework built over the last 30-40 years. The speakers suspect antitrust reform is driven partly by resentment of large tech firms and populist politics, even though consumers generally like these services. Legislative outcomes in antitrust remain uncertain because the public likes the companies under scrutiny and key enforcement leadership appointments were still unresolved.

Data Points: Stimulus package size: $1.9 trillion - American Rescue Plan discussed as the broader funding context for broadband and other policy measures. Emergency broadband benefit: $3.2 billion - Subsidy to provide up to $50/month toward broadband service, or $75/month in tribal areas. Tribal area broadband subsidy: Up to $75/month - Higher monthly support under the emergency broadband benefit program for tribal areas. Connected device support: Included - The emergency broadband benefit was described as including money toward a connected device. Emergency connectivity fund: $7.2 billion - Funding for equipment and related information services for students, teachers, and library patrons off-campus. Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund: $10 billion - For critical capital projects directly enabling work, education, and health monitoring, including remote options. Additional capital funding: $10 billion - Another infrastructure/capital allocation mentioned alongside the coronavirus capital projects fund. State aid: $195 billion - Aid to states that can support households, small businesses, affected industries, and infrastructure including broadband. City aid: $130 billion - Aid to cities with similarly broad allowable uses, including broadband-related infrastructure. E-rate emergency connectivity fund size: $7 billion - Used in a back-of-the-envelope calculation to estimate per-student support. Estimated number of students: 56 million - Used as the denominator in the per-student calculation for the emergency connectivity fund. Approximate per-student amount: $125 per student - Calculated by dividing $7 billion by 56 million students, before overhead. Approximate usable per-student amount after overhead: $100 per student - Hosts estimated administrative overhead would reduce the available amount per student. Annual E-rate spending: $4 billion annually - Referenced as a steady funding stream already in place for schools. Recovery Act broadband spending: About $3 billion - Described as the size of the 2009 BTOP-related spending studied in Sarah Oh’s paper. Counterfactual allocation method: Reverse auction - Suggested as a potentially more efficient way to allocate broadband infrastructure funds. Broadband speed example: About 1.5 Mbps - Used as an example of the bandwidth needed for a Zoom video chat based on app statistics. Legacy regulatory threshold: $100 million - Referenced as a former 'major regulation' threshold in OIRA days, now viewed as small relative to today’s spending. Potential fiber cost estimate: About $40 billion - Referenced from a prior back-of-the-envelope estimate to connect most of the remaining country. Public opinion data point: Among the most admired companies - Used to explain why public sentiment may not align with antitrust reform pressure on major tech firms.

Pivotal Quotes: "it’s almost too many pots to be able to follow and to be able to trace what’s going on" — Tom Leonard: On the difficulty of tracking overlapping broadband funding streams "we want to spend money on it, but it almost seems as if we’re more interested in looking like we’re doing something than in actually doing something" — Scott Walston: On the lack of rigorous evaluation and measurement in broadband policy "the debate insists on sticking with that one set of things" — Sarah Oh: On the narrow focus on bandwidth metrics instead of broader performance measures

Implications: Broadband policy will likely remain spending-heavy but evidence-poor unless agencies improve measurement and evaluation. Antitrust reform may advance, but public support and implementation details remain uncertain.