Brattle Experts Affirm Findings on Fiber Deployment Benefits Following Recent Study Review
Brattle Principals Coleman Bazelon and Paroma Sanyal have reviewed a March 2025 study from the Phoenix Center titled “Economic Benefits of Fiber Deployment: A Review of The Brattle Group Study.” The Phoenix Center study was conducted in response to Brattle’s November 2024 report, Economic Benefits of Fiber Deployment. Below are four key points addressing the Phoenix Center’s review:
Alignment on Positive Impacts
The Phoenix Center’s reanalysis confirms the Brattle team’s original finding that fiber infrastructure contributes positively to property valuations, identifying a positive impact from fiber broadband on home values and rental rates. The Phoenix study finds a 5.6% increase in housing values for suburban areas. To put this in context, the Phoenix Center’s reanalysis finds the positive economic benefit generated by deploying fiber is likely much greater than the BEAD funds which were targeted for preferred fiber deployment.
Employment Impact Assessment
The Phoenix Center study inexplicably finds that fiber broadband is detrimental to employment without offering any economic basis for why this may be the case, calling into question the reliability of the study’s conclusions.
Technical Considerations
The Phoenix Center study raises superficial technical concerns regarding the Brattle report’s methodology – none of which undermines the results of the Brattle report – that fiber deployment had a significant positive impact on certain economic indicators. The Phoenix Center study focuses on the definition of urban, conflating all non-rural areas as urban, when much of the country is actually suburban. Further, criticisms of technical issues – such as multiplicative versus additive impacts, and parallel trends – are underdeveloped, with insufficient support for the analysis to be able to evaluate the criticisms.
Regardless, the criticisms do not undermine the Brattle report’s results. In fact, as mentioned above, even the Phoenix Center’s own analysis is consistent with Brattle’s findings on housing values, but the contradictory results are dismissed, arguing that improved home prices are not a benefit.
Transparency & Communication
Although the Phoenix Center raised concerns about the transparency of our research process – while not providing support for its own analysis – the Brattle team corresponded directly with the study’s author prior to their review being published, answering all questions asked.
The full Brattle report, “Economic Benefits of Fiber Deployment,” is available below.
