A Detailed Review: The Status of U.S. Broadband and The Impact of Fiber Broadband

This annual report highlights five key areas of impact—Digital Equity, Performance, Sustainability, Economic Impact, and Quality of Life/Personal Productivity—illustrating why the US has begun the largest fiber broadband investment cycle in history. Nearly $130 billion in federal, state, and local subsidies are being invested from the Competitive Carriers’ Association, the American Rescue Plan Act, the Federal Communications Commission’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund, the Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service ReConnect loan and grant program, and most recently the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). Internet use continues to advance overall in the United States, with more adoption and more perceived importance over time. Over the past 14 years, based on random sampling, average real-world download speeds have increased from 4 Mbps to 121 Mbps. Upload speeds have increased from 0.4 to 26 Mbps. The real inflation adjusted average price for Internet alone has increased slightly from $59 to $67 over the period. But there are some differences in speeds experienced by demographic delineators such as income. Rural versus urban/ suburban differences are especially pronounced. Fiber-to-the-home results in real positive societal and economic impacts such as more IT employment, more work from home, more income from home-based businesses, better health access, better educational access, enablement of migration trends, and less CO2 costs to the environment.