Residential fixed broadband internet access in the United States (US) has long been distributed inequitably, drawing significant attention from researchers and policymakers. This paper evaluates the efficacy of the Connect America Fund (CAF), a key policy intervention aimed at addressing disparities in US internet access. CAF subsidizes the creation of new regulated broadband monopolies in underserved areas, aiming to provide comparable internet access, in terms of price and speed, to that available in urban regions. Oversight of CAF largely relies on data self-reported by internet service providers (ISPs), which is often questionable. We use the broadband-plan querying tool (BQT) to curate a novel dataset that complements ISP-reported information with ISP-advertised broadband plan details (download speed and monthly cost) on publicly accessible websites. Specifically, we query advertised broadband plans for 687k residential addresses across 15 states, certified as served by ISPs to regulators. Our analysis reveals significant discrepancies between ISP-reported data and actual broadband availability. We find that the serviceability rate-defined as the fraction of addresses ISPs actively serve out of the total queried, weighted by the number of CAF addresses in a census block group-is only 55%, dropping to as low as 18% in some states. Additionally, the compliance rate-defined as the weighted fraction of addresses where ISPs actively serve and advertise download speeds above the FCC's 10 Mbps threshold-is only 33%. We also observe that in a subset of census blocks, CAF-funded addresses receive higher broadband speeds than their monopoly-served neighbors. These results indicate that while a few users have benefited from this multi-billion dollar program, it has largely failed to achieve its intended goal, leaving many targeted rural communities with inadequate or no broadband connectivity.

翻译：长期以来，美国居民固定宽带互联网接入的分布存在显著不平等，这引起了研究人员和政策制定者的广泛关注。本文评估了旨在解决美国互联网接入差异的关键政策干预措施——连接基金（CAF）的实施成效。CAF通过对服务不足地区新建受监管的宽带垄断企业提供补贴，力图使这些地区在价格和网速方面获得与城市区域相当的互联网接入服务。目前对CAF的监管主要依赖互联网服务提供商（ISP）自行上报的数据，而这些数据的可靠性常受质疑。本研究利用宽带套餐查询工具（BQT）构建了一个新颖数据集，通过采集ISP在公开网站上宣传的宽带套餐详情（下载速度和月租费用），对ISP上报信息进行了补充验证。具体而言，我们针对15个州内68.7万个被ISP向监管机构认证为已覆盖的住宅地址，查询了其宣传的宽带套餐信息。分析结果显示，ISP上报数据与实际宽带可用性之间存在显著差异。我们发现，服务可用率（定义为ISP实际服务的地址数占查询地址总数的比例，并按人口普查区块组内的CAF地址数进行加权）仅为55%，在某些州甚至低至18%。此外，合规率（定义为ISP实际服务且宣传下载速度超过联邦通信委员会10 Mbps阈值的地址加权比例）仅为33%。我们还观察到，在部分人口普查区块中，获得CAF资助的地址比由垄断企业服务的邻近地址获得了更高的宽带速度。这些结果表明，尽管这个耗资数十亿美元的项目使少数用户受益，但总体上未能实现其预期目标，许多目标农村社区仍然面临宽带连接不足或完全缺失的困境。