On January 2, NTCA – the Rural Broadband Association released its "2024 Broadband/Internet Availability Survey Report." The report highlights progress made in the last year in broadband access and service capabilities offered by rural providers. It's based on August 2024 survey questions from 228 rural broadband providers that have an average of 5,257 residential subscribers and 524 business fixed broadband connections.
According to the report, 88.6% of 2024 respondents' customers on average could receive a maximum downstream speed greater than or equal to 100 Mbps, up from 84.0% in the 2023 iteration of the report and from 81.9% in the 2022 report. Additionally, "76,4% of customers on average had access to Gigabit downstream speeds, up from about 67% in 2023."
Although the report observes that "[a]n average of 90% of respondents' customers can receive maximum upstream speeds of greater than or equal to 20 Mbps," it's noteworthy that only 12% of customers subscribe to 1 Gbps or better service plans, up from 10.1% in 2022's survey. However, 55.3% subscribe to plans offering at least 100 Mbps but less than 1 Gbps download speeds, up from 48.5% a year before. And 22.6% subscribe to plans providing at least 25 Mbps download speeds but less than 100 Mbps, down from 27.4% a year prior.
Some interest groups and fiber broadband providers have previously urged the FCC to set a 1 Gbps or better download speed benchmark to define broadband. Yet the customer subscription data indicated in the survey report show that the agency's current 100 Mbps benchmark is far more attuned to actual consumer demand than a 1 Gbps aspirational benchmark. It is far better for the Commission to focus on ensuring all Americans have access to 100 Mbps than to direct efforts to boost multi-gigabit speeds for only some Americans while leaving others unserved or underserved.
A particularly important part of the NTCA survey report is the overview of rural broadband providers' responses identifying types of barriers to widespread fiber deployment, including: deployment costs, longer distances to customer premises, regulatory uncertainty, inflationary pressures, permitting delays, railroad crossing permitting, and current regulatory rules. In 2025, the 119th Congress, the new Trump Administration's NTIA, and the FCC should focus on reducing those barriers, including by streamlining permitting processes and ensuring regulatory certainty to promote infrastructure investment.
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