The State of Broadband in America, Q4 2020

by Tyler Cooper, Julia Tanberk, Broad Band Now,  January 19, 2021

Our final state of broadband report for 2020 concludes our quarterly exploration of the progress being made to bring every American online amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Key Findings

Low-priced access expanded during the fourth quarter across many states as more providers expanded their lower cost offerings. 70% of Americans had access to low-priced wired broadband plans compared to 52% measured YoY in the 2019 Q4 report.

Rhode Island remains the state with the highest percentage of residents with access to low-priced plans of speeds 100 Mbps download and 25 Mbps upload.

While 78% of Americans have access to wired providers who report that they can service speeds of 100 Mbps download / 25 Mbps upload, only 30% of Americans have access to low-priced plans at that speed.

For the first time, residents in Alaska have gained access to low-priced broadband plans. Despite this, less than 1% of the population has access. All 50 states plus the District of Columbia now have some level of access to low-priced plans.

21 states had improved or steady internet latency, compared to Q3. The state with the least latency is New Jersey, the one with the most is Hawaii….

Latency and RTT (Round Trip Time)

Latency, measured here as round trip time (RTT), is the time in milliseconds it takes for data to be transferred between two points: the source and the destination. Synonymous with “ping,” it is essentially a measurement of how long it takes your computer to fetch data from another location on the internet. As reported in our Q3 report, latency continues to have a significant impact on two-way video conferencing, which millions of Americans are still relying on for both work and school. Twenty-one states had improved or steady internet latency, compared to Q3 and seven remained steady compared to Q3.

Hawaii continued the trend it saw through the earlier parts of 2020 and remained significantly behind other states, followed by Alaska. Although still one of the highest latency states, Maine did continue to improve from rates reported in the beginning of 2020, with the Q4 rate down 18% compared to Q1. New Jersey maintained its position as the best state for low latency, followed closely by Rhode Island, which had its best quarter of the year….

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