Americans pay too much for Internet service,” President Biden recently declared. Broadband Internet access, in fact, has been a recurrent theme in several of Biden’s speeches, from announcing an Executive Order in 2021 to his most recent State of the Union Address. It is easy to see why the President would pay attention to Internet access in the U.S. We use Zoom, Teams, and Meet for work and school; we depend on Facebook and Twitter for news from friends, family, or society; TikTok, Netflix, and Spotify provide hours of entertainment. Medical appointments, government services, and commercial activity are all offered online. And broadband Internet access is the foundational service that undergirds all this economic and democratic activity.

But is Biden correct that the price is too high? Yes. This column reviews and describes recent research on broadband access and affordability, and, in so doing, urges the greater interdisciplinary collaboration on the subject of broadband markets.