Rural Broadband At A Glance

Depending on the ultimate goal of universal Internet access, the distinction between individual access and household access can be important. The gap in Internet use between rural and urban households (9.3 percentage points) is wider than the gap between all rural and urban individuals (6.5 percentage points). Policies encouraging broadband access generally adopt either an implicit individual or household approach, where the policy addresses one population directly with only secondary efforts directed at the other. If, for example, the policy goal is to improve educational opportunities for school-age children, a program that improves in-school broadband access may be more cost-effective than one designed to improve broadband access to households, although such a program may also spur household adoption.