Broadband Basics: How it Works, Why It’s Important, and What Comes Next

Reliable high-speed broadband is essential to life in the US. With historic federal investments now available, states are working to expand access to high-speed internet. Broadband Basics covers network components, technologies, infrastructure, broadband policy, and barriers to access. To understand broadband policy, infrastructure, and technologies, it’s important first to understand how the internet works. The internet is not, as the old joke goes, a series of tubes. It’s a complex set of interconnected networks—each owned and run by different internet service providers (ISPs)—through which data travels. But not all networks are created equal. Networks that enable high-speed internet, for example, are known as broadband. A broadband network is made of three main components:

• The backbone: Large fiber optic pipes, often buried deep underground, crossing state and national boundaries, that are the main data routes on the internet and the primary path for internet traffic between and within countries.
• The middle mile (aka “backhaul”): The part of a broadband network that connects the backbone to the last mile.
• The last mile: The segment of a broadband network that connects a local internet service provider to a customer, such as via a cable line to the home.