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Building Digital Access: NTIA Partners with Tennessee on Broadband Summit

by Doug Kinkoph, Associate Administrator, Office of Telecommunications and Information Applications

Nationwide broadband connectivity is the aspirational goal bringing together broadband leaders for the March 20 Tennessee Broadband Summit in Nashville. The event, sponsored jointly by NTIA and the Tennessee Department of Economic & Community Development, is an all-day program with workshops and problem-solving presentations from industry, state and local leaders, and community groups working to build connectivity options throughout the state.

Strong leadership at every level of government can lead to increased broadband deployment. New opportunities through the Tennessee Broadband Accessibility Act and other state and Federal initiatives are vital tools that can help increase broadband accessibility. Also encouraging is the increase in broadband leadership from states, as evidenced in the strong participation at a recent meeting in Washington, D.C. of state broadband leaders across the country to discuss the types of challenges, programs, and investments that are happening at the state level.

BEA: Initial Estimates Show Digital Economy Accounted for 6.5 Percent of GDP in 2016

BEA News

This blog post was cross-posted on the Bureau of Economic Analysis website.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis released, for the first time, preliminary statistics and an accompanying report exploring the size and growth of the digital economy. Goods and services that are primarily digital accounted for 6.5 percent of the U.S. economy, or $1.2 trillion, in 2016, after a decade of growing faster than the U.S. economy overall, BEA’s research shows.

From 2006 to 2016, the digital economy grew at an average annual rate of 5.6 percent, outpacing overall U.S. economic growth of 1.5 percent per year.
In 2016, the digital economy supported 5.9 million jobs, or 3.9 percent of total U.S. employment. Digital economy employees earned $114,275 in average annual compensation compared with $66,498 per worker for the total U.S. economy.

BEA includes in its definition of the digital economy three major types of goods and services:

  • the digital-enabling infrastructure needed for an interconnected computer network to exist and operate
  • the e-commerce transactions that take place using that system
  • digital media, which is the content that digital economy users create and access.

First Look: Internet Use in 2015

John B. Morris, Jr., Associate Administrator, Office of Policy Analysis and Development

As the Obama Administration continues to focus on expanding broadband access and adoption, NTIA released new data today that shows that some of the demographic groups that have historically lagged behind in using the Internet—such as senior citizens, minorities, and Americans with lower levels of educational attainment—are making big strides.

Particularly promising, Internet use increased significantly among children and older Americans between 2013 and 2015. Children between the ages of 3 and 14 became substantially more likely to go online, as Internet use among this group increased from 56 percent in 2013 to 66 percent in 2015, and Internet use among those aged 65 or older increased from 51 percent to 56 percent during the same period. In contrast, usage remained largely unchanged among those who were previously most likely to go online, with 83 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 44 reporting Internet use in both 2013 and 2015.

The latest data comes from the Computer and Internet Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS), which included nearly 53,000 households and was conducted for NTIA by the U.S. Census Bureau in July 2015. The large sample size provides a detailed picture of where, why and how Americans go online.