Benton Institute for Broadband & Society - Edward Oughton

Data Analytics Can Improve How We Design Broadband Strategies

benton — Wed, 17 Feb 2021 12:41:55 +0000

Internet access is essential for economic development and helping to deliver the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, especially as even basic broadband can revolutionize the opportunities available to users. Yet, more than one billion people globally still live in areas without internet connectivity. Governments must make strategic choices to connect these citizens, but currently have few independent, transparent, and scientifically reproducible tools to rely on. As part of the World Bank’s Digital Economy for Africa program, a new assessment approach has been developed to help test the effectiveness of different universal broadband strategies. For example, the United Nations Broadband Commission has been discussing setting a highly ambitious target of ensuring everyone globally has access to at least 10 Mbps by the end of this decade. While this is an admirable aim, there are few open-source tools to help understand how different decisions perform in helping to achieve this target. Traditionally, this analysis has been undertaken with spreadsheets which introduce considerable uncertainty into the results because of the many generalized assumptions involved. The new approach takes advantage of data analytics methods to help robustly assess the effectiveness of different strategies in terms of broadband capacity, coverage, and cost. This involves two important innovations. Firstly, using remote sensing to provide high resolution estimates of broadband demand at the settlement level. Secondly, using ‘least-cost’ network designs to plan broadband networks as if the aim was to build them, enabling this information to be integrated into the assessment process to estimate capacity, coverage, and cost.

[Edward John Oughton is currently Assistant Professor of Data Analytics at George Mason University in the College of Science, having previously been a senior researcher at the University of Oxford. This research garnered him the Charles Benton Early Career Scholar Award (2020) from the Benton Institute and TPRC.]

Benton Content:

Benton Original Content

https://www.benton.org/blog/data-analytics-can-improve-how-we-design-broadband-s…

Teaser:

Assess the effectiveness of different universal broadband strategies

Source:

Benton Institute for Broadband & Society

Author:

Edward Oughton

Send date:

Wed, 02/17/2021

Daily Digest:

Daily Digest 2/16/2021

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Wed, 02/17/2021

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Reviewing wireless broadband technologies in the peak smartphone era: 6G versus Wi-Fi 7 and 8

zwalker@benton.org — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 17:21:50 +0000

With the arrival of the peak smartphone era, users are upgrading their smartphones less frequently, and data growth is decelerating. To ensure effective spectrum management decisions, policy makers require a thorough understanding of prospective wireless broadband technologies, current trends and emerging issues. We identify three emerging issues necessary for successful telecommunication policy. Firstly, evidenced-based policy making needs to be able to measure effectively how much demand takes place where and how. Thus, new datasets are needed reflecting real usage by different wireless broadband technologies, for indoor and outdoor users. Secondly, with data consumption growth slowing, there needs to be an urgent reassessment of spectrum demand versus allocation. Past forecasts do not reflect recent data and regulators urgently need to re-evaluate the implications for spectrum management. Finally, regulators need new and improved Lifecycle Impact Assessment metrics of cellular versus Wi-Fi architectures, to support successful policy decisions which mitigate energy and emissions impacts.

Benton Content:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308596124000636?dgcid=rss_sd…

Teaser:

An evaluation of policy issues associated with 6G, Wi-Fi 7, and Wi-Fi 8

Source:

Telecommunications Policy

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Send date:

Fri, 04/26/2024

Daily Digest:

Daily Digest 4/25/2024

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Publish Date:

Thu, 04/25/2024

Coverage Type:

Research

Internet/Broadband

Research

Wireless Telecommunications

Wireless Internet

What would it cost to connect the unconnected? Estimating global universal broadband infrastructure investment

Grace Tepper — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 15:31:55 +0000

Roughly 3 billion citizens remain offline, equating to approximately 40 percent of the global population. Therefore, providing Internet connectivity is an essential part of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (Goal 9). In this paper, a high-resolution global model is developed to evaluate the necessary investment requirements to achieve affordable universal broadband. The results indicate that approximately $418 billion needs to be mobilized to connect all unconnected citizens globally (targeting 40–50 GB/Month per user with 95 percent reliability). The bulk of additional investment is for emerging market economies (73 percent) and low-income developing countries (24 percent). Tthe paper contributes a high-resolution global assessment that quantifies universal broadband investment at the sub-national level to achieve SDG Goal 9.

Benton Content:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0308596123001817?dgcid=rs…

Teaser:

Roughly 3 billion citizens remain offline, equating to approximately 40 percent of the global population.

Source:

Telecommunications Policy

Author:

Edward Oughton

David Amaglobeli

Marian Moszoro

Send date:

Thu, 10/12/2023