2021 California Statewide Survey on Broadband Adoption

The California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) released its 2021 Statewide Broadband Adoption Survey, in partnership with the University of Southern California, in a summary report titled Internet Adoption and the "Digital Divide" in California. The CETF survey tracks the progress of broadband deployment and adoption throughout CA from 2008 to 2021 and finds more than 90% of the state’s households have high-speed Internet connectivity at home through either a computing device or a smartphone, but 9.6% still are not connected. Home broadband adoption is increasing, up 3 percentage points from 2019, and for the first time since the Statewide Survey on Broadband Adoption began in 2008, the percentage of CA households with access to the Internet has passed 90%.  Also encouraging, the proportion of Californians connecting to the Internet through a home computing device—defined as a desktop, laptop or tablet computer—has increased from 78% to 85%. 

In 2021 while a record percentage of Californian household are connected to the Internet, 15% of California households (nearly 2 million) are digitally-disadvantaged:  9.6% are unconnected (about 1.25 million households); and 5.6% are underconnected (about 730,000 households). Affordability is the main reason that keeps these households from connecting to the Internet with digital literacy and the lack of an appropriate computing device also being relevant factors

Several California demographic groups fall more than 10 percentage points below the 90% overall adoption goal:

• Households earning less than $20,000 (70%)
• Adults 65 or older (77%)
• Not a high school graduate (63%)
• Spanish-speaking Latinos (75%)
• Adults who identify having a disability (83%)