Pew’s Broadband Access Initiative Aims to Achieve Universal High-Speed Internet Connectivity

Program uses advocacy, research, and technical support to advance strategies to boost availability, affordability

Fact Sheet June 16, 2021 Read time:

Projects: Broadband Access

Overview

The Pew Charitable Trusts’ broadband access initiative works with state and federal lawmakers, researchers, and other partners to accelerate the nation’s progress to universal, affordable high-speed internet service.

Despite more than three decades of public and private efforts to expand broadband availability, millions of Americans still lack access to reliable high-speed internet service and millions more cannot afford connections when they are available.

The broadband access initiative works to solve these problems by:

Advocating for state and federal policy change.
Addressing key research gaps.
Partnering with state governments to implement evidence-based solutions for broadband expansion.
Equipping stakeholders with the information and resources they need to support universal access.

Key strategies

The broadband access initiative has conducted extensive research indicating that although no single policy will achieve universal access, several common strategies have been successful at expanding broadband. These strategies include:

Raising minimum speeds and prioritizing technologies that can be scaled to reach those elevated standards to help ensure that networks built today will still be useful years into the future.
Ensuring long-term funding to help communities and providers confidently plan for network expansion and address costs for future technology upgrades.
Improving accountability and oversight of public funds to guarantee that projects achieve their intended purpose and that taxpayers receive the connections they were promised.
Addressing affordability of connections, including by examining the full costs of broadband deployment and operations; how those costs vary by market; and the range of interventions that can effectively and sustainably deliver affordable connections for all.
Defining a role for each level of government because universal access cannot be achieved by any single policy or unit of government and instead will require local, state, and federal coordination.