Report Compares Broadband Performance in Rural Areas

On June 11, Recon Analytics published an interesting report titled, "The Happiest and Unhappiest Broadband Customers in the United States." Recon received responses from broadband customers from rural counties across America regarding their satisfaction with broadband service performance. The report includes a list of the ten happiest broadband counties as well as the ten unhappiest broadband counties. In the report, author Dr. Roger Entner makes the commonsense observation that broadband provider performance matters more than technology platform, and that the performance level of individual providers can vary substantially in different geographic markets. For more, check out Recon Analytics' report.

Market competition certainly is important for encouraging performance quality by broadband Internet service providers in rural as well as urban areas. Broadband service providers that fail to deliver speeds at advertised benchmarks, that experience network outages and do not provide subscribers with sufficient connectivity, or that otherwise fail to provide value for the dollar deserve to lose subscribers to market rivals who can offer better performance. It's no secret that rural areas have lower population levels and density as well as geographic challenges to providing service. Consequently, rural areas have less competitors than urban areas. Near-term increases in availability and awareness of fixed wireless access (FWA) services may provide an additional spur to incumbent rural broadband providers to boost performance levels in areas where they are perceived to be lagging.