Category: News

Version 0.19 includes schools and libraries using data from the Department of Education (NCES/CCD, NCES/PSS, NCES/IPEDS) and the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Public Library Survey. This feature set will be extended with additional data in an upcoming release. For now, schools and libraries can be displayed on map layers. You can click on a pin to see additional information. If you like this feature, let me know what additional information you would like at your fingertips.

Other new features include summary tables for ACS Internet Subscription Characteristics, for ACS Computing Devices in the Home, and for key demographic measures that appear on the Home page. Finally,  M-Lab Speed Test State vs. Local comparisons are available.

On May 2, 2019, the FCC published corrections to the Fixed  Broadband Deployment data for December, 2017. The bulk of the changes involved two providers: BarrierFree and King Street Wireless, L.P.

Revisions were applied to 35 states and territories. A few of the corrections, such as revising the spelling of a provider’s name, have no real effect on the analysis. Others, such as the removal of BarrierFree from several states, are more extensive.

A preliminary analysis of the changes can be found here.

The Connectivity Explorer will be updated to include the revised data on May 12, 2019.

Version 0.14.0

The latest version of the I3 Connectivity Explorer incorporates the newly published Census estimates about broadband subscription rates. I’ve also reworked the map views in order to test out a different approach to showing multiple forms of information on the same map. Finally, one can now drill down from the Wireline and Wireless provider tables to see just where each provider provides service. I hope that this approach clarifies the prior version’s more muddled sets of choices.

December,  2018,  brought gifts of data from both the Census and the FCC. These new data sets are now incorporated throughout the Connectivity Explorer.

The new Census data (released December 6, 2018) adds information about broadband and computer usage across the US.This is a rich set of data that contains many fascinating relationships. I’ll be adding several new data views to help you understand those relationships over the next few weeks.

The new FCC wireline data set (released December 12, 2018) contains extensive changes, while the updated wireless data contains corrections to the July 2017 trove.

New Features

• You can now specify a target (wireline) speed for each notebook. So if your target goal is, say, 100 Mbs download, 25 Mbs upload, set this in the notebook, and that speed will be added to various views and choices. If you don’t set a target speed, it will fall back to the FCC goal of 25↓/3↑.

• You can also set the expected economic boost for a community (in annual dollars per household). This value is used on the overview page where the annual economic benefit of broadband is displayed. The help pages talk more about where this value came from. I’m using the mean value from the Swank Program Study (Connecting the Dots Of Ohio’s Broadband Policy)

  Here’s more about the Swank Program study: The first, Measuring Broadband’s (Public) Return On Investment, is an overview from the Daily Yonder. The second, from the  Blandin Foundation uses the study’s results to analyze several counties in Minnesota.