John Busby

In 2020, we manually checked availability of more than 11,000 addresses using Federal Communications Commission Form 477 data as the “source of truth.” Based on the results, we estimated that 42 million Americans do not have the ability to purchase broadband internet. In 2021, we expanded our study, manually checking availability of terrestrial broadband internet (wired or fixed wireless) for more than 58,000 addresses. In all, we checked more than 110,000 address-provider combinations using the FCC Form 477 data as the “source of truth”.

BroadbandNow Research manually checked broadband availability of more than 11,000 addresses using Federal Communications Commission Form 477 data and estimates that 42 million Americans do not have the ability to purchase broadband internet. The FCC's Broadband Deployment Report states that 21.3 million Americans, or 6.5 percent of the population, lack access to broadband internet, including wired and fixed wireless connections. Here’s what we did and how BroadbandNow arrived at this estimate: