BroadbandNow

Home internet is so fundamental to daily life that it barely registers as a subscription anymore. Now, it’s an essential utility, on par with electricity and running water. Yet as household budgets remain stretched from years of elevated prices, a growing share of Americans are quietly straining under the weight of their monthly internet bill. However, this is one cost they cannot afford to cut. This report is based on a BroadbandNow survey of 954 U.S. adults conducted in March 2026, combined with our analysis of active plans from more than 2,100 internet providers.

An analysis of  broadband access, affordability, performance, and competition across all 50 states and Washington (DC) to determine which states are leading and lagging in closing the digital divide. While infrastructure deployment has improved nationwide, a devastating affordability gap threatens to leave millions of rural Americans disconnected despite available service.

The Federal Communications Commission reports that 19.6 million Americans lack access to a fixed 100/20 Mbps broadband service. A nationwide audit using 109,473 internet service provider‑address tests from October 2024 to March  2025 finds the true figure closer to 26 million, exposing a 6.4 million-person (33 percent) undercount.

In 2020, we manually checked availability of more than 11,000 addresses using Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Form 477 data as the “source of truth.” Based on the results, we estimated that as many as 42 million Americans did not have the ability to purchase broadband internet at the time. Since then, quite a bit has changed.

Tracking fiber penetration across the U.S. broadband market provides valuable insights into technological adoption and accessibility. This study is our attempt to solve this issue. Key Findings:

Using a combination of public and proprietary data, BroadbandNow has created a comprehensive report on the quality of the internet in all 50 states and Washington (DC).

For decades, municipal broadband operations have been subject to a minefield of restrictions and barriers designed to make the prospect of establishing or maintaining a community broadband network costly, difficult, and unsustainable. There are currently 17 states in total that have restrictive legislation against municipal broadband networks in the US. Although no states have managed to remove their restrictions in 2022, 2023 could be the year that things begin to change for states that have historically been opposed to allowing for a public option.

For decades, municipal broadband operations have been subject to a minefield of restrictions and barriers designed to make the prospect of establishing or maintaining a community broadband network costly, difficult, and unsustainable. There are currently 17 states in total that have restrictive legislation against municipal broadband networks in the US.

Examining pricing data from fifty national and regional providers, we’ve found that prices have decreased across all major download speeds (25Mbps up to 1Gbps+) and technologies (cable, fiber, DSL and fixed wireless). This study utilizes average pricing of broadband internet plans for 50 providers since 2016. Prices have fallen since 2016, with the highest speed plans falling the most. When looking at the average price for internet in each speed bucket starting in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the fourth quarter of 2021:

The federal government launched the Emergency Broadband Benefit in February 2021 to provide low-income households with a $50 monthly discount on their internet bill as part of a multi-pronged approach to reduce the digital divide, which is a function of both access to a wired high-speed internet service provider and the affordability of service. According to the Universal Service Administrative Company, enrollment in the Emergency Broadband Benefit reached 7.1 million households in November 2021 (up from 6.1 million in October).