Pew Charitable Trusts to Launch Interactive Database on State Broadband Deployment

BROADBAND BREAKFAST INSIGHT: This is fabulous news. Pew has one of the best reputations for consistent, credible, and long-lasting research on broadband adoption. Coupled with the launch of its Broadband Research Initiative earlier this year, this begins to address some of the issues and complexities, and get us out of the messy world of inadequate broadband data in which policy-makers are currently mired.

The research group will soon release its findings about where the largest connectivity gaps are in the U.S., as well as the state policies and practices being implemented to correct Internet disparities, from Government Technology:

The Pew Charitable Trusts, which has spent more than a year studying Americans’ access to broadband, will soon be launching an online explorer inventorying the data it’s collected — including information on gaps to coverage and the policies state governments are pursuing to fill them.

The explorer will be a searchable catalog of everything from current laws and policies, to information on funding and financing, and will likely launch sometime late this summer, said Kathryn de Wit, manager of Pew’s broadband research initiative — which began its work early last year.

Pew — which specializes in statistical data and analysis — has launched similar explorers before, including one on world religions.

Though broadband is now considered a necessity for daily life in the 21st century, some 24 million Americans — many living in rural communities — still lack adequate access to it. Why this is the case is a complex question that cannot be easily explained away by simple rationalizations, said de Wit.

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Source: Pew to Launch Broadband Access and State Policy Explorer