The broadband competitive landscape on the eve of BEAD

In recent decades, broadband internet service has taken its place alongside other network utilities that define modern life, such as electricity, telephony, and, to a lesser extent, piped water and sewer systems. The pandemic, when internet service could be a matter of life and death through the way it facilitated social distancing, clinched broadband’s status as a basic need. The broadband business differs from other utilities in its technological diversity. All electricity comes through wires. All water comes through pipes. But broadband internet service is provided by means of several different technologies. This creates a special policy challenge. How do the different broadband technologies compare? Fortunately, there’s good data about that, thanks to the Federal Communications Commission’s Broadband Data Collection dataset, which has been released twice per year since June 2022. The existing reach and performance of the various technologies that are used to provide broadband internet service in the United States shape the challenge facing state broadband offices and the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program in defining and pursuing universal coverage. [July 1, 2025]