Introduction

Internet is a fundamental necessity in democratic and equitable societies in the twenty-first century. United Nations officially recognized the internet as a human right in 2016 (Howell & West, 2016). However, more than four billion people in the world don’t have access to the internet (World Economic Forum, 2016). In 2013, The Census Bureau released the results which asked questions about internet access for the first time. The data showed that about 27 percent of New York City households lack broadband at home. In this study, broadband is defined as the readily-available high-speed internet connection.

LinkNYC is a municipal broadband infrastructure project that provides free broadband service across New York. Municipal broadband is one of the ways governments use to provide internet access to people. It is high-bandwidth and is funded either in part or completely by the municipal government. LinkNYC is replacing payphones with a 9.5-foot-tall structure known as Links and often referred to as kiosks. These kiosks provide public Wi-Fi to New Yorkers, small businesses, and visitors in all five boroughs. Each Link also provides free phone calls, device charging and has a tablet computer for accessing city services, maps, and directions. (City of New York, 2019).

This research employs a data-driven approach to explore and understand what role does broadband access play for residents of New York. It explores socio-economic data from various sources and assesses the role of LinkNYC in the city’s broadband ecosystem. The work is a collaboration between NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress (NYU CUSP) and Intersection Co (stakeholder of the LinkNYC project).

Goals

Three distinct groups of research questions were formulated after the literature review:

1. Broadband and society: Is there a relationship between broadband access and socio-economic factors? Specifically, we are interested in finding out how income and age data are related to household broadband access data

2. LinkNYC’s role in New York’s broadband ecosystem: Does LinkNYC help level the broadband accessibility in the city? Do people who don’t have broadband at home rely on LinkNYC to access information and services online? This research will focus on discovering patterns in how LinkNYC is used, particularly, in areas with low at-home broadband access levels.

3. Social benefits of LinkNYC: Does the LinkNYC program help the city residents use the internet in ways that make their lives better? Do people use LinkNYC to look for jobs? Can we showcase a relationship between new Links installed and job placements? Do people use LinkNYC’s Wi-Fi to learn practical skills? Can we determine which new areas can benefit from LinkNYC? Can we use socio-economic profiles of neighborhoods that benefited from the stations to do that?

We address these questions in a quantitative fashion. The success of the research will be evaluated by assessing the quality of our modeling and our ability to communicate our findings to the general public and stakeholders across public and private sectors.

Datasets

The table below contains a summary of datasets used in the research. A detailed description of datasets as well as their structure, characteristics, and limitations can be found in Appendix 2. Detailed information about data processing and cleaning can be found is the Supplementary Materials.