Microsoft Launches Open Data Campaign to Close the Digital Divide – BroadbandNow Contributes Pricing and Competition Data

Today, Microsoft launched the Open Data Campaign to help address the longstanding digital divide in the United States. The company has provided an open data set on broadband usage gathered from its Airband Initiative for researchers, policymakers and concerned citizens to better understand access at the local level.

In tandem with this initiative, BroadbandNow has contributed an open data set on pricing and competition at the county level. Specifically, we have provided the lowest price available for 25 Mbps and 100 Mbps speeds per county, as well as the number of providers offering wired and fixed wireless service. We believe that the price of service is influenced heavily by competition, and that the availability of low-priced plans is as important as access itself.

It is our hope that when this information is combined with Microsoft’s data set (and others), governments and organizations focused on the digital divide can better understand the driving factors behind it. We commend Microsoft for this exciting initiative, and we look forward to the conversations and collaborations that it will fuel across the country in the months and years to come.

Written by Tyler Cooper

Tyler Cooper is the Editor-in-Chief at BroadbandNow. He has more than a decade of experience in the telecom industry, and has been writing about broadband issues such as the digital divide, net neutrality, cybersecurity and internet access since 2015.