Are Broadband Prices Rising? The Perils of Naive Price Comparisons

Affordability has emerged as a defining political issue of the moment, and broadband internet service affordability is no exception—especially with the expiration of low-income broadband subsidy programs such as the Affordable Connectivity Program in 2024. Policymakers and advocates frequently cite current broadband prices as evidence that affordability challenges are worsening, justifying calls for expanded subsidies and regulatory intervention. But are broadband prices actually rising? Recent analyses of the Federal Communications Commission’s Urban Rate Survey data have reached starkly different conclusions. For example, John Horrigan of the Benton Institute offered the headline claim that the URS data revealed that broadband prices increased 4.8% in real terms from 2024 to 2025. Horrigan attributes this increase to the changing “composition of the URS sample,” where the shift in the 2025 sample toward higher-speed services “pulled the average upward for 2025 relative to 2024.” Given the change in sample composition, a simple difference in means of 4.8% is a biased estimate of the price change; that is, the figure does not equal the true price change even in large samples. In fact, the 4.8% differences become a -1.6% difference simply by excluding speed tiers from 2025 that were absent from the 2024 data; Horrigan’s claimed price increase is fully the result of sample composition.