According to a new report from the federal government, access to high speed internet is spreading rapidly, but it’s still unavailable at any cost to nearly 20 million mostly rural Americans.
The Federal Communications Commission says that 20 million figure is a big improvement since the previous year when 26 million Americans didn’t have access to high speed internet service. Those numbers may already be out of date, however, because the FCC says those figures were current as of June 2011.
The way we interpret those numbers, more than 6 million Americans got the ability to access high speed internet in the previous twelve months. If we extrapolate those numbers it would seem to indicate that every American will have access to high speed internet within the next three years. Unfortunately, those Americans who do not have access are the ones in rural areas to where it is more difficult to bring service.
In addition, the FCC puts another wrinkle in the numbers when they say that the decline not only reflects internet service providers’ geographical expansion beyond the easy-to-serve suburbs, but also reflects improved data collection techniques.
Translated that from official bureaucratese, that means that more Americans really did have access to high speed internet than the previous studies indicated, but the government did a poor job putting the numbers together.
Nevertheless, it’s clear that rural Americans are particularly hard hit by their lack of high speed internet access. The numbers are surprising: Approximately 14.5 million rural Americans have no access to high speed internet. To put it another way, more than 23% of the 61 million Americans living in rural areas couldn’t get high speed internet even if they wanted it. It’s just not available where they live.
How do those numbers compare to Americans who live in urban and suburban areas of the country? Only 4.5 million out of 254.9 million Americans living in urban and suburban areas have no broadband access. That’s less than 2%.
It’s interesting to delve further into the statistics in the report. For example, when you look at how the states rank you see a direct correlation between access to high speed internet and economic productivity. West Virginia, one of the poorest states by every measure, had the lowest level of access at just 45.9%.
Contrary to what you may think, rural Americans can be found in even the most urbanized states. For example, more than 35% of California’s rural residents do not have access to high speed internet. It’s not offered in many of the Golden State’s rural areas.
The FCC has revealed that it has increased its budget to subsidize high speed internet providers expansion into America’s rural regions. Next year’s budget will show a $115 million line item for those subsidies. The subsidy is called the Connect America Fund.
Companies that agree to accept the subsidy, which will amount to a hefty $775 per household connected, will be required to build out their network infrastructure in three years or less. When the network is complete it is estimated that high speed internet access will be available to an additional 400,000 residents in 37 states.
Progress is definitely being made, and we congratulate the FCC and the participating internet service providers, but it’s vital that it be made faster. High speed internet access becomes more vital every day and we eagerly await the day when every American has access to high speed internet.
Source: USA Today
Gary Holder says
You really need to check and see where you’re money is going I live 4 miles from town can’t get enough internet speed to watch Netflix. other internet company’s within 2 miles of Me will not come to my house because frontiers territory.
CheapInternet.com Administrator says
You’re going to have trouble getting any of the low-income internet plans to provide enough gigs to let you watch Netflix. These programs are mostly designed to be basic plans for people who can’t afford unlimited plans.
You do have a couple non-cable options that might help IF they’re available where you live — PCs for People and 4GCommunity. Check them both out at this link:
https://www.cheapinternet.com/low-income-internet
Anna says
I live in a rural and can’t get internet services unless I pay a for highly cost internet. and that I’m having troubles getting services for my home and that sucks cause I love the internet I web server all the time plus my bf needs it for his business for advertisement and what not so I think internet sure be look into expanding services for the rural areas