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Rural Consumer Internet Perspectives

Angela HollmanJesse AndrewsTimothy Obermier

其他書名	A Hard Look at Quality and Policy
出版	SSRN, 2022
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=UbfezwEACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋Digital connectedness has grown markedly over the last ten years. However, digital deserts, particularly in rural areas, remain. Likewise, data documenting this phenomenon exists, though internet throughput at the household level and its connections to consumer satisfaction are understudied. This lacuna in scholarship is primarily due to the lack of robust data collected from individual households. This study aims to further our understanding of these dynamics by leveraging a unique high-resolution dataset of internet throughput speeds connected to demographic and satisfaction survey data. This dataset offers an unprecedented picture of the connections between internet performance, demographics, location, and household satisfaction. The dataset was created using two collection mechanisms. First, a modified Raspberry Pi, dubbed a Quantitative Throughput (QT) unit, is affixed to the household's primary internet connection. Through this process, ping data, download, and upload speeds were collected every five minutes for one week from approximately 250 rural households. Second, the device prompts the user to complete a survey, collecting demographic information and satisfaction indices of various aspects of their internet service. This combination of internet throughput data linked to household demographics and internet satisfaction allows for analyzing the connection between internet performance and consumer satisfaction at the hitherto understudied household level. We establish several unexpected trends in the data. Surprisingly, we find no correlation between throughput speed, performance, and household cost. However, we find the importance of the internet service provider (ISP) and type of internet connection media affecting overall satisfaction. Likewise, the spatial patterns that emerge from the data are closely linked to individual ISP accessibility. Certain ISPs and types of service perform significantly better, as evidenced by higher throughput metrics and overall reported satisfaction on the survey data. These results are confirmed using spatial clustering algorithms, which predominately group households by mode of delivery and ISP despite neither variable being used in the sorting process. Our findings suggest that certain broadband delivery methods provide markedly lower degrees of satisfaction and performance. This, combined with the dearth of competition in many rural areas, create pockets of low performance and satisfaction. Crucially, these areas of lower performance and satisfaction are not linked to any intrinsic aspects of rurality, such as population density or demographics; we often see markedly different numbers within relatively small geographic areas. Instead, they result from contingencies of ISP service and delivery mode. Considering this finding and our findings that consumer cost and throughput are unlinked, we suggest a closer look at FCC policies that are agnostic towards the mode of delivery. An attempt to integrate performance metrics and consumer satisfaction into the FCC structure of subsidies is perhaps warranted to protect consumer interests. Otherwise, a policy of ostensive neutrality towards the mode of delivery is, in effect, accepting lower levels of household satisfaction.