Many more Americans are online today than in 2017. But growth in adoption of digital subscription plans has slowed. So what's going on?

My new, topline look at American Community Survey (ACS) data shows a spike in additional at-home wireline broadband subscriptions between 2019 and 2021. After that, growth has been modest, with only a 0.8-point increase from 2021 to 2023.  

The post-2019 uptick in broadband adoption was largely an outgrowth of pandemic-era efforts to support low-income households. Between 2017 and 2023, households with annual incomes below $50,000 saw a 17 percent increase in wireline broadband adoption (from 54 percent to 63 percent). At the lowest income levels (i.e., households whose annual incomes are below $25,000), wireline growth was 26 percent from 2017 to 2023, settling at 56 percent in 2023 versus 45 percent in 2017.

Rural households also showed sizable gains in home broadband adoption and subscriptions to cellular data service. Rural households had a 16 percent growth in wireline adoption since 2017, compared with 7 percent for non-rural households. Rural households with annual incomes below $50,000 experienced a 22 percent growth in home broadband adoption since 2017, with adoption levels improving from 49 percent in 2017 to 60 percent in 2023. The growth rate in broadband adoption was a striking 35 percent among households with annual incomes of $25,000 or less over this time frame.

In conjunction with private-sector and philanthropic efforts to help get people online during the pandemic, government subsidies for service helped more people afford home internet subscriptions. The subsequent flattening of growth has been due to the end of internet service subsidies—such as the Emergency Broadband Benefit and its successor, the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP)—and economic headwinds faced by low-income households. Once the subsidies expired, their termination showed up in broadband subscriber numbers.

What may be going on is that the nation has reached an income-constrained internet saturation point. The existence of an alternative means of access (i.e., the smartphone) may lessen the impulse to purchase a superior means of access (i.e., wireline) for low-income households. Adoption data show that wireline and wireless subscriptions are mainly complementary tools for access, not substitutes. Most Americans (74 percent) have both, and at upper-income levels, more than 90 percent do. But where incidence of “cell only” online users is substantial, it is among the lowest-income Americans.

To improve broadband adoption, future growth will have to come from the same population segments that experienced adoption growth upon the pandemic’s onset. They are the segments where significant connectivity gaps remain—and thus are the most promising for attracting new subscriptions. 

The takeaways for policymakers and other stakeholders are:

• Non-deployment issues loom large in rural broadband adoption. Sizable rural broadband gaps across all income categories show how network availability gaps depress rural adoption. But low-income rural residents are far less likely to subscribe to broadband than upper-income rural households. Addressing nondeployment considerations, such as service affordability and the availability of digital skills training, needs to be part of any solution for rural broadband adoption. 
• Older adults are a promising source of future growth. More than one in five adults in the United States are over the age of 65. That age group—and, especially, the 75-and-older subgroup—has experienced strong growth in home wireline adoption in recent years, as well as large increases in subscriptions to wireless data plans. Maintaining these patterns will require not just addressing affordability but also ensuring that this population has access to digital skills training programs and community “help desks” for troubleshooting online challenges. 
• The ACP’s fingerprints are evident in recent broadband trends. This report’s analysis of ACS data shows positive changes in broadband adoption in the same places and economic groups in which recent Benton Institute research found the largest impact, namely in rural areas and among low-income households.

Read more about recent adoption trends in Marking Progress, Targeting Gaps: Lessons From Broadband Adoption Trends.

John B. Horrigan, PhD, is a Benton Senior Fellow. He is a national expert on technology adoption, digital inclusion, and evaluating the outcomes and impacts of programs designed to promote communications technology adoption and use. Horrigan served at the Federal Communications Commission as a member of the leadership team for the development of the National Broadband Plan. Additionally, as an Associate Director for Research at the Pew Research Center, he focused on libraries and their impact on communities, as well as technology adoption patterns and open government data.

The Benton Institute for Broadband & Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring that all people in the U.S. have access to competitive, High-Performance Broadband regardless of where they live or who they are. We believe communication policy - rooted in the values of access, equity, and diversity - has the power to deliver new opportunities and strengthen communities.

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