Conference Agenda
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Broadband Policy-1: Connectivity Cost Burdens: Contingency cost measures for assessing household broadband affordability
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Connectivity Cost Burdens: Contingency cost measures for assessing household broadband affordability University of Toronto, Canada Recent CRTC and FCC proceedings reveal a blind spot when considering telecommunications affordability: advertised prices, provider availability, and competition indicators are not effective measures of a household’s ability to sustain connectivity under recurring costs burden, contingent and episodic charges, and service-maintenance stress. We locate this evidentiary blind spot within the assumption that competitive retail markets will discipline the full cost structure of connectivity, including non-base fees and service conditions, in the absence of pricing regulation. Our research develops a Household Broadband Survey as a measurement instrument for practical affordability, operationalizing connectivity cost burden, contingency-cost exposure, and stress-test outcomes at the household-level. The instrument shows that subsidized rental status is the strongest marker of contingency-cost exposure, while monetized contingency costs sharply differentiate stress outcomes such as disconnection, debt, borrowing, and reductions in ancillary basic needs capacity. The article concludes by proposing improved data reporting and prospective affordability stress-testing tools. Anonymized public dataset: https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/3w6bkcx58v/2
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