Broadband/Internet Availability Survey Report

This survey shows that despite ongoing challenges of serving the most sparsely populated parts of the country and notwithstanding pandemic-related supply chain concerns, rural broadband providers have continued to increase broadband speeds available to rural Americans by offering more fiber-to-the-home services than ever before. Survey highlights include: 

• NTCA members continue to lead the charge in deploying fiber-to-the-home networks that enable higher speeds in rural America. More than three-quarters (75.6%) of respondents’ customers can receive downstream speeds greater than/equal to 100 Mbps, compared to 67.8% in 2020, and 55.4% of customers have access to Gigabit downstream speed, up from 45.1% in 2020. Additionally, 75% of respondents’ customers are served by fiber-to-the-home connections, up from 69.9% in 2020 and 58% in 2018.
• More customers are subscribing to higher speeds. More than 37% of respondents’ customers subscribe to 100 Mbps broadband or better, up from just over 28% in the 2020 survey.
• More than two-thirds of NTCA members offer their customers the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB). Of the survey respondents that offer the EBB, one-third reported that 50 or more customers signed up for the discounted service.
• NTCA members continue to provide critically important broadband service to schools, libraries, and other anchor institutions in their communities. Respondents offer robust levels of fixed broadband service to all public libraries, community colleges, state universities and extensions, 911 call centers, and hospitals/medical clinics located within their communities, and nearly all primary/secondary schools and public safety entities (police, fire department). In addition, NTCA members provided higher speeds to these anchor institutions than in past years. 
• However, NTCA members continue to face pandemic-related supply chain concerns. The percentage of respondents citing fiber order fulfillment delays as a barrier to widespread broadband deployment increased from 27.7% in 2020 to 57% in 2021, and 80.4% experienced an inability or delay in procuring supplies for network deployment this year. The impact of these delays or inability to procure necessary equipment has led to delays installing services for customers and delayed network construction for approximately two-thirds of responding companies.