Urban-Rural Connectivity Gaps Will Persist, But So Will Lots of Other Gaps

When critics complain about disparities between urban and rural home broadband availability or performance, they often are correct. Many times, rural coverage and network performance are not close to resembling what is possible in urban areas.

But many of us would point out that the same is true for virtually all other indices of availability. We might note that the state of Montana does not have a single Whole Foods store. We might point out that Thai restaurants are harder to find in rural areas, as are large Asian grocery specialists. 

There are always fewer small, mid-sized or enterprise businesses--on a percentage basis-- operating in rural areas, compared to urban areas. All of that is because dense urban areas create more possibilities for human activity of all kinds. 

So we should not be at all surprised that population density has a huge impact on the cost of building new networks, mobile or fixed, but especially fixed networks.  

U.S. population density is quite thin across most of its geography. That directly affects the cost of building broadband networks, as hefty subsidies are required to reach the last one percent or two percent of remote locations. 

And the United States has a huge percentage of its land mass that is thinly settled, if at all settled. 

In Canada, 14 percent of the people live in areas of density between five and 50 people per square kilometer. In Australia, 18 percent of people live in such rural areas.

In the United States, 37 percent of the population lives in rural areas with less than 50 people per square kilometer.

Put another way, less than two percent of Canadians and four percent of Australians live in such rural areas. In the United States, fully 48 percent of people live in such areas.

Coverage is an issue in such rural areas. About six percent of the U.S. land mass is “developed” and relatively highly populated. Those are the areas where it is easiest to build networks. 

But about 94 percent of the U.S. land surface  is unsettled or lightly populated, including mountains, rangeland, cropland and forests. And that is where networks are hardest to build and sustain.

Difficult, but not impossible. The latest survey survey data from NTCA suggests matters have improved dramatically. 

The NTCA’s latest poll of its members indicates 61 percent of residents can buy service with downstream speeds of at least 1 Gbps, up from 55 percent in 2021,  45 percent in 2020, and 25 percent in 2019. 

source: NTCA 

To be sure, the NTCA survey likely omits the smallest service providers as well as those whose performance might not measure up. One should not expect a private business to voluntarily  disclose data that is unfavorable.

Still, the point is that population density (or lack thereof) is a reason networks are hard to build, expensive to build and take longer to build in thinly-settled areas than in urban areas. 

So, yes, there is, and might always be, differences between network performance or availability in very-rural areas. But that is true for virtually anything we might measure.