Thers is a new report that takes a very academic look at Socioeconomic benefits of high-speed broadband availability and service adoption. Here are the highlights they offer:

• We review the existing empirical literature on high-speed broadband.
• We consider the most relevant socioeconomic effects of modern broadband.
• We find huge benefits in terms of economic growth, productivity and resilience.
• Effects on employment are more ambiguous.
• Positive socio-economic effects take hold only after broadband adoption.

I went in and took a deeper dive into their conclusions and have shared them as bullet points:

• In line with both previous reviews, we find that new broadband Internet has a positive and significant effect on GDP at the aggregate level for all studies using country-year panel data. When this result is contrasted with the findings of the older broadband literature, a nonlinear relationship emerges. While the older literature suggests that there seems to be a minimum threshold of broadband quality for economic benefits, the newer literature points to diminishing returns beyond a certain level of broadband quality. However, evidence for diminishing returns may also be because demand for innovative and new bandwidth-intensive services develops and increases over time. Hence, there might be a longer time lag before the full benefits of high-speed Gigabit connections become apparent in GDP or consumer surplus, and these benefits are not (yet) captured in the data used in the available empirical studies.
• Findings on employment effects also tend to be consistent with the older literature, with most studies finding positive links between (basic and new) broadband and labor market outcomes. However, some studies also find insignificant or even negative employment effects. Both strands of literature relate these ambiguities to heterogeneous effects with respect to differences in urbanization and the skill level of the workforce. While the latter suggests that the effect of broadband is significant mainly for high-skilled workers, the comparatively stronger effect of broadband in remote areas suggests that these regions catch up with more economically developed urban areas once sufficient broadband infrastructure is available.
• Like the literature on basic broadband Internet, we find strong evidence of the positive effects of new broadband Internet on productivity. However, the effects may vary according to the sector studied and may emerge only over time and in combination with strategic and organizational investments. This also corroborates well with the broader empirical literature on ICT and productivity (Cardona et al., 2013; Jung and Gómez-Bengoechea, 2024)) which shows that ICT is evident in the productivity statistics. The productivity effect grows positively over time and ICT investment necessitates complementary organizational investments, skills, and industry structures.
• In contrast to the previous surveys, we include other relevant outcome variables. We find additional GDP-relevant effects associated with increases in rents and house prices, which is in line with the basic broadband-related literature (Ahlfeldt et al., 2017).
• Limited evidence supports the positive impact of new broadband on education and human capital, aligning with older literature.
• Regarding the ICT–energy–CO2 emission nexus, which has become increasingly relevant in the empirical literature in the last decade, ICT elements can have positive environmental effects on society, especially in developed countries where the use of ICT is high and which at the same time show low levels of ICT production. Although this externality is of minor importance, it is also policy relevant, as it shows that it is not necessary to decouple ICT from economic growth to achieve positive environmental effects. However, further ICT availability and adoption is warranted to enhance the usage of emission-reducing enabling technologies.
• Whereas the above-mentioned effects implicitly all rely on “economic normal times”, the lockdown periods during the Covid-19 pandemic showed that digital infrastructures and services are of great importance for the resilience of economies in “times of economic crisis”.
• In times of economic crisis, this also includes work from home, contributing not only to higher labor productivity compared to low-quality broadband Internet connections but also saving commuting time and thereby increasing leisure and thus consumer utility (Barrero et al., 2021a; Barrero et al., 2021a). Therefore, the total benefits of broadband are largely underestimated if, for example, only GDP-related effects are considered.