34 million Americans do not have access to broadband meeting the benchmark speeds of 25 Mpbs for downloads / 3 Mbps for uploads, said American telecom regulator FCC.
Federal Communications Commission’s 2016 Broadband Progress Report said 40 percent of rural and tribal people do not have access to service at the FCC’s speed benchmark.
41 percent of schools have not yet met the FCC’s short-term goals for connectivity capable of supporting digital learning applications.
34 million Americans or 10 percent of the population lack access to fixed broadband at speeds of at least 25 Mbps for downloads/3 Mbps for uploads.
Broadband deployment improved significantly from last year’s report, which found 55 million or 17 percent without access to 25/3 Mbps service.
39 percent of the rural population (23.4 million Americans), and 41 percent of residents of Tribal lands (1.6 million Americans) lack access to 25/3 Mbps service
4 percent of urban Americans lack access to 25/3 Mbps broadband, said FCC. These numbers show improvement from last year’s report, when 53 percent of rural residents lacked access, and 63 percent of the residents of Tribal Lands lacked access.
59 percent of schools have met the FCC’s goal of purchasing service that delivers at least 100 Mbps per 1,000 users, and a much smaller percent have met the longer-term goal of 1 Gbps/1,000 users.
No satellite broadband service — both fixed terrestrial and fixed satellite broadband — met that speed benchmark during the reporting period.
editor@telecomlead.com
