Better Broadband Lowers Unemployment Rates, Study Says

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Researchers from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Oklahoma State University this week released a new study again tying better broadband to lower unemployment. The study tracked broadband availability and unemployment rates across 95 counties in Tennessee from 2011 to 2016, and found that counties with access to high speed broadband had a 0.26 percentage point lower rate of unemployment compared to low speed counties. Early adoption of faster speeds also aided unemployment rates, researchers found. The researchers concluded that 'better quality broadband appears to have a disproportionately greater effect in rural areas' that have been historically neglected by private ISPs, many of which received countless billions in taxpayer subsidies over the last decade. Disinterested with the slow return on investment, many private ISPs have let their networks literally fall apart.

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