Small Towns, Big Speeds: How Some Municipal Broadband Providers Outperform Their ISP Peers

More than 700 communities across the U.S. are served by some type of municipal broadband network that provides its residents with internet services. In simple terms, a municipal broadband network is an internet service provider that is owned and operated by the local city or county government or a municipal utility rather than a private company like Comcast or AT&T. Using Ookla’s Speedtest Intelligence data, we studied the performance of 14 of the largest municipal networks from December 2024 through December 2025, and compared their performance against each other and to their internet service provider competitors in their market. It’s important to note that some Speedtest data may reflect the speeds of the users’ broadband price plans vs. the  possible speeds that the provider can deliver. When compared to their broadband competitors, eight municipal providers in the U.S. beat their broadband competitors in median upload speeds and one municipal provider, Sherwood Broadband, outpaced the competition in median download speeds