Predictive models to measure the impact of fiber-optic broadband speeds on local towns and communities

•Economic benefits of Internet bandwidth expansion.•Focus on local towns and communities.•Big data approach – data integration from 10 agencies – federal, state, local, corporate.•Developed economic metrics to compare benefits to towns.•Predictive model to estimate benefits from internet expansion. Internet availability and speed can impact a local community’s education, healthcare, safety, and economic development. Currently, there are few, if any, formal analyses to help communities make informed decisions on investments in internet and bandwidth expansion. This is in spite of the longstanding view posited by economic policy researchers that certain public infrastructure investments must be analyzed on a local government basis. Here, we adopt the local community focus and combine data from local, state and federal sources to develop models that predict the impacts of fiber-optic bandwidth expansion on economic factors for individual towns and communities. Our predictive analysis also demonstrates differing impacts related to town size and yields interesting outcomes related to local geographies. The rankings and comparisons derived from our predictive methodology can be used by town and state planners to holistically plan internet infrastructure development across localities. Our modeling approach can be applied to develop models specific to other towns and communities facing similar decisions regarding investments in internet speed.