![]() As of June 2018, according to Ookla (sponsor of the popular Internet Speedtest app), the average US broadband download rate is now 96 Mbps, about double the typical speed in other developed nations (the US used to lag behind, but that’s changed as providers have upgraded their networks). Over the past decade, speeds offered by all types of connections have increased. They may have a high-speed cable connection, or a fiber-optic hookup, or a more modern version of DSL (an older technology that’s typically slower than cable but easier to get in some areas because the data comes over existing copper phone lines). To get it, there’s a strong chance you’ll need to look to the skies.Īs long as home Internet works, most folks probably don’t worry or care about how they get it. But one day you may need Internet access someplace where traditional connection methods aren’t available, whether it’s on a plane at 35,000 feet or on vacation, miles from the nearest person. Maybe you’ll never decide to leave the city and permanently go rural. In a 2018 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, 24 percent of rural adults described a lack of high-speed access as a “major problem,” compared with 9 percent of suburban adults. Folks living in rural areas aren’t happy with this. ![]() The older folks who remain don’t have access to vital services, like telemedicine, or to services that are just really nice to have, such as FaceTime for chats with the grandkids. The result is that rural communities are seeing an exodus of younger families, partially because these families don’t have the ability to live modern lives in poorly connected towns. ![]() Though FCC data suggests 35 percent of people living on tribal lands lack broadband access, further review suggests that rate could be even higher. The 8 percent of the population that has no access to broadband is almost entirely rural (to be precise: 80 percent of it is). ![]() According to the American Broadband Initiative’s 2019 report (the effort is a joint venture between the US departments of Agriculture and Commerce and relies on data from the Federal Communications Commission), about 92 percent of the US population has access to high-speed data (officially defined as download speeds of 25 Mbps and uploads at 3 Mbps via a non-mobile provider).īut in the countryside, it’s a different story. Rural communities are seeing an exodus of younger families, partially because these families don’t have the ability to live modern lives in poorly connected towns.Īnd for the most part, that’s typical of what high-speed Internet customers get. At home, you want your broadband connection to do everything, and to do it invisibly. They don’t have a dozen or more smart-home devices to support. Air travelers don’t expect to attend videoconferences or play online games. (There are a few differences between airborne access and what you’d get at home, but the setup is basically the same.) Depending on your outlook and circumstances-time of day, weather, how many people were using the system, and whether you are generally a patient human being-you were probably either awfully dissatisfied or pleasantly surprised.īut you’re not really expecting in-flight Wi-Fi to provide the same service or speeds that you need in a home or office setup. If you’ve ever gone online while aboard an airplane, you’ve likely used satellite Internet. That left us with a single alternative: Internet from space. Life in New Hampshire is supposed to be slower, but we didn’t want to give up everything. And we were dedicated cord cutters in Los Angeles, never having had a subscription to traditional cable service. We own multiple devices- tablets, phones, video monitoring systems, lighting-that access the Internet. We spend good portions of our workdays in video meetings. household Internet customer-currently 115 megabits per second, according to data gathered by Ookla’s Speedtest Global Index of broadband speeds (the test is limited to users who have actually tested their own speeds and have contributed to Ookla’s global database). That’s less than 1 percent of the typical speed enjoyed by the average U.S. But I believed our provider’s promises of the future, and it wasn’t until I tried to sign up for service that I discovered just how not-so-futuristic that future was: DSL at 768 kilobits per second. We’d recently moved from Los Angeles to the rural hamlet of Sandwich, New Hampshire (“Population: more than 1,200,” the town's website states), and we were figuring out how to get connected. “The Future of the Internet Is Fast,” beckoned the sign-up page of our new local Internet provider.
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