Got broadband? Access now extends to 94 percent of Americans.

The steady expansion of the broadband Internet infrastructure has come about as a result of both government backing and private investment, according to the Broadband Progress Report by the Federal Communications Commission. Access to the Internet via broadband has now spread to 94 percent of Americans, a jump of two percentage points over last year and a huge leap from the 15 percent who had such access just a decade ago.

Of course, that still leaves 6 percent of the populace – some 19 million people – without. The 19 million who have no broadband access includes one-fourth of people living in rural counties and one-third of people living on tribal lands, areas where infrastructure is often nonexistent. That's 7 million fewer than last year. Closing the “last mile” of connectivity – the end of the line where the Internet is physically impossible to access due to lack of infrastructure – is expensive, and there is little financial incentive for telecommunication companies to do it.