The 1 World Connected initiative was launched in 2016 to provide an empirical foundation for efforts to close the global digital divide. In just the past few years, the proportion of the people of the world able to enjoy the benefits of Internet connectivity surged from one-half to two-thirds. Yet more work needs to be done. The insights generated by 1 World Connected’s research projects aid key decisionmakers, such as government departments and international organizations, in this important work with a data-driven foundation for determining what really works to bring the unconnected online. Over the years, the initiative’s projects have focused on increasing connectivity in the United States (for example, the use of municipal fiber and fixed wireless to connect people in smaller cities and rural areas) plus projects that seek to improve connectivity and access in developing countries in the areas of education, gender, and socioeconomic status. In 2022-2023, 1 World Connected continued its international work.

Increasing Global Connectivity

In September 2022, the University of Pennsylvania, through CTIC’s 1 World Connected project, pledged to the Partner2Connect Digital Coalition (P2C) to be a research and knowledge partner on connectivity and digital transformation. P2C is a multi-agency alliance launched by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies whose aim is to foster meaningful connectivity and digital transformation globally with a focus on developing countries. The pledge includes producing vital data-driven insights for policymakers and decision-makers and for supporting the evaluation of P2C initiatives.

Addressing Smartphone Affordability as a Barrier to Internet Adoption

1 World Connected’s research shows that universal access to broadband has increased. But even with improved access, the number of people using the Internet remains low, especially in developing countries. This suggests the need to focus on other barriers, and a particularly important one that emerged is smartphone affordability.

In 2022-2023, CTIC continued its collaboration with the United Nations Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development’s Working Group on Smartphone Access to address this barrier to Internet adoption. The Working Group, consisting of experts from diverse global organizations and government departments, appointed Prof. Christopher Yoo as the initiative’s lead expert. Prof. Yoo and the 1 World Connected team of CTIC fellows and Penn students researched and analyzed strategies to improve smartphone access, including local manufacturing of devices, device subsidies, and a reduction in device import duties. The analysis resulted in the identification of higher priority interventions, interventions that merit further exploration, and lower priority interventions. The team’s findings, along with its actionable recommendations to improve universal smartphone affordability, were published in the milestone report, Strategies Towards Universal Smartphone Access released at the UN General Assembly 77 in September 2022 in New York City. The CTIC project team included CTIC research fellows Leon Gwaka and Sindhura K S and Penn students Shahana Banerjee, Meghan Moran, and Sophie Roling.

The Impact of Connectivity on Education and Socioeconomic Outcomes

Education is another major focus for 1 World Connected. The 1 World Connected team is collaborating with UNICEF in Rwanda on a project to assess the impact of GIGA, a UNICEF- and ITU-backed project that aims to connect every school to the Internet by 2030, on education outcomes in Rwanda. The project will apply innovative methods to assess impacts among 50 pilot schools that received connectivity through GIGA. Findings from this project will feed into the country-wide implementation of GIGA. Prof. Yoo, who served as an external expert and advisor for GIGA, toured one of the GIGA pilot schools during his visit to Rwanda in June 2022.

The team is also working on a project to assess the socioeconomic impact of connectivity on socioeconomic outcomes. It will use anonymized tax data, matched with connectivity development efforts, from entities such as the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA). CTIC research fellow Leon Gwaka visited Rwanda in November 2022 and engaged with potential research partners, including UNICEF, Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA), and Rwanda Information Society Authority (RISA).

Future Work

CTIC will continue its collaborations with international organizations on projects that promote Internet accessibility and adoption. These include GSMA Mobile for Development Foundation, Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, ITU’s Partner2Connect Digital Coalition, and EQUALS: The Global Partnership for Gender Equality in the Digital Age. In addition, CTIC recently received a grant from Penn Global to continue its work on the impact of mobile Internet use, well-being, and gender in Bangladesh.

In November 2019, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation awarded CTIC and Penn’s Warren Center for Network & Data Services a $350,000 three-year grant to fund new independent research into the role data play in digital platforms’ business models and the resulting impact on antitrust policy and law.

The initiative’s co-leaders are Prof. Christopher Yoo of CTIC and Rakesh Vohra, the George A. Weiss and Lydia Bravo Weiss University Professor of Economics and Electrical and Systems Engineering and the Warren Center’s founding co-director.

The first phase of the initiative culminated in September 2021 at the Inaugural Economics of Digital Services Research Symposium, where researchers presented their findings to initiative leaders, fellow researchers, and antitrust experts, along with full papers and articles posted on the newly created EODS blog (www.pennEODS.org). Research areas included digital advertising, blockchains and smart contracts, ad- blocking and anti-tracking, search engines, cloud computing, value of social media, data neutrality, Big Data and employment, and the value of technology releases in the Apple iOS app ecosystem.

The second phase concluded in September 2022 with the Second Research Symposium on the Economics of Digital Services held at Penn Carey Law followed by the release of full papers and blog articles. Research areas covered privacy and the value of data records, revisions of headlines on media companies’ digital platforms, off-the-shelf repricing algorithms and their effect on collusion, mitigation of the financial incentive to misinform via information interventions, and the YouTube settlement’s impact on “made-for-kids” content creation.

The initiative’s third and final phase has been completed. Five grant proposals were selected for presentation at the third EODS symposium in September 2023.

In September 2017, CTIC received a National Science Foundation (NSF) Early-Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) grant to determine how to overcome legal barriers that were impeding the deployment of a cybersecurity technology known as the Resource Public Key Infrastructure (RPKI). RPKI is designed to prevent mistakes and malicious acts that can allow Internet traffic intended for one location to be highjacked and rerouted

to another destination. The technology has been slow in North America, where American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN), the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for North America, imposed legal requirements that exceeded those imposed by the RIRs responsible for other regions of the world.

After their year-long investigation into these and other areas, Prof. Christopher Yoo and then-CTIC academic fellow David Wishnick issued their report in January 2019. Since then, ARIN has adopted several of the report’s recommendations and continues to address concerns that it raised.

Principal Legal Issues

Under RPKI, holders of Internet addresses cryptographically sign authoritative certificates known as route original authorizations (ROAs) verifying where they are located and place those certificates in a library maintained by the RIR. This permits networks that are routing traffic to engage in route origin validation (ROV) in which they consult the certificate library to make sure that the route they are using is pointing at the correct destination.

On the ROV side, ARIN historically required those engaging in ROV to visit its website and agree to a clickwrap contract known as the Relying Party Agreement (RPA) before accessing its certificate library. This meant that providers of the software needed to validate routes could not preload the location of ARIN’s certificate library in their code. The need for this extra step every time ROV was deployed caused usage rates of ARIN’s certificate library to lag behind other parts of the world. The RPA also included clauses that some networks found problematic, including a blanket indemnification clause and a prohibited conduct clause that limited the distribution of information created with RPKI for research and analysis.

On the ROA side, the principal legal obstacles stemmed from the agreements that Internet address holders must sign before using RPKI. These agreements include arbitration and choice-of-law clauses that government actors were often prohibited by law from accepting. These agreements also required that those who held Internet addresses before ARIN existed to acknowledge that all property rights in their addresses belonged to ARIN.

Progress on Adoption

Since the report’s release, ARIN has made a number of changes that have implemented many of the report’s recommendations. Prof. Yoo has periodically presented progress reports to industry groups on the adoption of proposed changes, most recently at the February 2023 meeting of the North American Network Operators’ Group (NANOG 87), the professional association for Internet engineering, architecture, and operations.

Among the key advances discussed by Prof. Yoo at NANOG 87 were:

• Explicit permission for software validators to distribute their code with ARIN’s certificate library preloaded
• Elimination of language regarding property rights in Internet addresses
• Authorization for broader sharing of RPKI-based information
• Clarification of waiver of arbitration and choice-of-law clauses when barred by law
• Inapplicability of indemnification to ARIN’s gross negligence

The project also uncovered operational issues needed for RPKI to work effectively. These include better information about certain operational practices such as uptime, update frequency, response times, and community deployment of best practices. The dialogue prompted by the report has led to greater collaboration to address these concerns.

CTIC’s RPKI project sparked an unprecedented degree of cooperation among government agencies, academics, the Internet community, and ARIN to help bolster Internet routing security in North America and worldwide. Prof. Yoo will continue to monitor and refine recommendations and report on developments to the Internet industry.