Communications

CFA Report on Competitive Broadband Service Providers and The Baby Bell Duopoly

In November of 2013, the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute (NAF) released the data of The Cost of Connectivity 2013, its second annual best-effort survey of rates offered by individual broadband service providers in dozens of cities across the U.S. and the globe. This research is an effort to fill the need for more provider-specific data on cost and other service characteristics. 1 The release triggered a response from critics who trotted out old complaints about the comparisons being too simplistic as well as, pointing to the absence of important variables.2 Playing the Washington game of “criticize first, ask questions later,” their criticism provided a few simplistic examples of things that might affect the analysis, but they did not actually try to conduct the analysis they called for, even though the necessary data is readily available.