Office of the New York State Comptroller

In 2021, the Office of the State Comptroller reported that more than 1 million (roughly 14 percent) New York households lacked access to broadband. Two federal programs—the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program (EBB) and the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP)—have been established to address these disparities in access and are demonstrating positive results. The share of low-income households with a broadband subscription climbed from 64 percent to 76 percent between 2019 and 2021, a 12 percentage point increase.

Broadband access is increasingly necessary for everyday activities and especially vital for businesses, remote workers, online education and health care appointments, but Empire State Development’s (ESD) New NY Broadband Program has fallen short of its mission to bring universal broadband access to New Yorkers, according to an audit by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. The program was created in 2015 to make high-speed (100 megabits per second or Mbps) broadband service “universal” in all but the most remote areas of the state by 2018.

New York State has made great progress building broadband infrastructure and ranks second in the country for the share of population with access to basic broadband speeds. However, there are still over 250,000 New Yorkers for whom broadband service is unavailable in their neighborhood, and even more for whom broadband is unavailable in their home or place of business.