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Broadband Center of ExcellenceUniversity of New Hampshire Scholars' RepositoryBroadband Center of Excellence4-1-2015All Are Not Equal When it Comes to BroadbandBroadband Center of Excellence (BCoE)Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/bcoeThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion inBroadband Center of Excellence by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, pleasecontact nicole.hentz@unh.edu.Recommended CitationBroadband Center of Excellence (BCoE), "All Are Not Equal When it Comes to Broadband" (2015). Broadband Center of Excellence.34.https://scholars.unh.edu/bcoe/34The Federal Communications Commission hasconcluded that all Americans are not beingserved equally when it comes to broadbanddeployment, and that its past benchmark forbroadband is woefully out of date.The Commission announced its finding earlier this year as part of the annualbroadband review that it must conduct. The old definition of broadband, or“advanced telecommunications capability”, was 4 Megabits per second(Mbps) downstream and 1 Mbps upstream. The new is 25 Mbps/3 Mbps.“Recent data show that approximately 55 million Americans (17 percent) livein areas unserved by fixed 25 Mbps/3 Mbps broadband or higher service, andthat gap closed only by three percentage points in the last year. We thereforeconclude that broadband is not being deployed to all Americans in areasonable and timely fashion,” the FCC said.All Are Not Equal Whenit Comes to BroadbandFCC reportThe Commission further stated that a digital divide persists between urban andnon-urban parts of the country at a variety of data rates, and that the problem isone of supply, not demand: “Consumers in rural America adopt broadband at thesame rates as consumers in urban areas.”The report is available at the FCC website. There also is a collection of maps theFCC provides to illustrate broadband deployment.BROADBAND IN HEALTH SERIES — FCC REPORTPAGE 2The report states that Americans living in rural areas and on Tribal landsdisproportionately lack access to broadband. The statistics showed that25 Mbps/3 Mbps capability is unavailable to 8% of Americans living inurban areas, compared to 53% of Americans living in rural areas and 63%of Americans living on Tribal lands and in the U.S. Territories.

All Are Not Equal When it Comes to Broadband

https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1033&amp;context=bcoe

All Are Not Equal When it Comes to Broadband

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