A new report from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) says that 25 million Americans do not have access to broadband internet. Of these 25 million, more than 19 million are living in rural communities. Broadband adoption in the U. S. has plateaued at 70 percent since 2010.<\/b>
\nA new report from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) says that 25 million Americans do not have access to broadband internet. Of these 25 million, more than 19 million are living in rural communities.
Internet access is essential to so many aspects of daily life, and broadband access is becoming more and more essential too. In order to browse the web quickly, to take online classes, and to watch videos or do other high-bandwidth tasks, broadband is necessary. However, millions of people in the U. S. do not have the option of this faster internet service available to them.
Part of the reason that so many people lack access to broadband is to do with rates of adoption of wired technologies. Other wired technologies like phone landlines, electricity, and cable all gradually increased in adoption from the first time they become available before plateauing at an adoption rate of around 70 percent. It then took decades of work and investment to raise the adoption rate to complete the last 30 percent. It took more than 25 years for the adoption rates of electricity and cable TV to rise above 70 percent. Broadband is following a similar pattern, where adoption increased steeply from the introduction of the technology around 2000, but has plateaued at around 70 percent since 2010.
By contrast, adoption rates of wireless technologies are much faster. Technologies like radio, color television, cellphones, and smartphones all reached near saturation within a decade or so without hitting the 70 percent plateau. Geography comes into play here, as it is easy for anyone to get access a wireless technology like smartphones, but many rural areas lack the necessary infrastructure to give people access to wired technologies like broadband.
One proposal to address the lack of access to broadband is to make use of wireless internet access through 5G. However, this will be hard to access in rural areas too \u2014 currently there are still 13 percent of Americans with mobile devices who can\u2019t even access 4G, let alone 5G.
To get a better picture of what the data looks like in practice, the FCC has an interactive map of broadband penetration. You can see which areas in the U. S. have access to broadband, and also how many broadband providers are available within an area. Broadband is often expensive and slow because a lack of competition in areas where only one or two providers are available, so the map shows these areas of low competition as well.<\/p>\n