Internet in the United States

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The Internet in the United States grew out of the ARPANET, a network sponsored by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense during the 1960s. The Internet in the United States of America in turn provided the foundation for the worldwide Internet of today.

Contents

Internet connections in the United States are largely provided by the private sector and are available in a variety of forms, using a variety of technologies, at a wide range of speeds and costs. In 2000, a majority of U.S. households had at least one personal computer and internet access the following year. [1] In September 2007, a majority of U.S. survey respondents reported having broadband internet at home. [2] In 2019, the United States ranked 3rd in the world for the number of internet users (behind China and India), with 312.32 million users. [3] As of 2019, 90% of adults in America use the internet, either irregularly or frequently. [4] The United States ranks #1 in the world with 7,000 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) according to the CIA. [5] Internet bandwidth per Internet user was the 43rd highest in the world in 2016. [6]

Internet top-level domain names specific to the U.S. include .us, .edu, .gov, .mil, .as (American Samoa), .gu (Guam), .mp (Northern Mariana Islands), .pr (Puerto Rico), and .vi (U.S. Virgin Islands). Many U.S.-based organizations and individuals also use generic top-level domains, such as .com, .net, and .org.

Overview

Access and speed

Wireline broadband availability showing locations where the maximum advertised download speed is 3 Mbit/s or more (December 2012). In 2019, Microsoft criticized the FCC for relying on ISPs to self-report availability, and said internal usage data indicated the FCC maps overstate actual availability. US Wireline Broadband 31Dec2012.tiff
Wireline broadband availability showing locations where the maximum advertised download speed is 3 Mbit/s or more (December 2012). In 2019, Microsoft criticized the FCC for relying on ISPs to self-report availability, and said internal usage data indicated the FCC maps overstate actual availability.

Access to the Internet can be divided into dial-up and broadband access. Around the start of the 21st century, most residential access was by dial-up, while access from businesses was usually by higher speed connections. In subsequent years dial-up declined in favor of broadband access. Both types of access generally use a modem, which converts digital data to analog for transmission over a particular analog network (ex. the telephone or cable networks). [9]

Dial-up access is a connection to the Internet through a phone line, creating a semi-permanent link to the Internet. [9] Operating on a single channel, it monopolizes the phone line and is the slowest method of accessing the Internet. Dial-up is often the only form of Internet access available in rural areas because it requires no infrastructure other than the already existing telephone network. Dial-up connections typically do not exceed a speed of 56 kbit/s, because they are primarily made via a 56k modem. [9]

Broadband access includes a wide range of speeds and technologies, all of which provide much faster access to the Internet than dial-up. The term "broadband" once had a technical meaning, but today it is more often used as a marketing buzzword to simply mean "faster". Broadband connections are continuous or "always on" connections, without the need to dial and hangup, and do not monopolize phone lines. [9] Common types of broadband access include DSL (digital subscriber lines), which uses a telephone line, [10] [11] cable Internet access, [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] satellite Internet access, [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] and mobile or wireless broadband, via cell phones or a mobile broadband modem, through a cellular or wireless network, and from a cell tower. [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] In 2015, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defined broadband as any connection with a download speed of at least 25 Mbit/s and an upload speed of at least 3 Mbit/s, though the definition has used a slower speed in the past. [37] In March 2024, the FCC increased the minimums to 100 Mbit/s downloads and 20 Mbit/s uploads for defining broadband. [38]

The percentage of the U.S. population using the Internet grew steadily through 2007, and declined slightly in 2008 and 2009. Growth resumed in 2010, and reached its highest level so far (81.0%) in 2012, the latest year for which data is available. 81.0% is slightly above the 2012 figure of 73% for all developed countries. Based on these figures the U.S. ranked 12th out of 206 countries in 2000, fell to 31st out of 209 by 2010, and was back up slightly to 28th out of 211 in 2012. In 2012 the U.S. figure of 81.0% was similar to those of France (83.0%), Belgium (82.0%), Australia (82.3%), Austria (81.0%), Slovakia (80%), Kuwait (79.2%), and Japan (79.1%). The figures for the top ten countries in 2012 ranged from 91.0% for Finland to 96.9% for the Falkland Islands. [39]

Internet usage in the United States varies widely from state to state. For example, in the U.S. overall in 2011, 77.9% of the population used the Internet. But in that same year (2011), there was a large gap in usage between the top three states - Washington (80.0%), New Hampshire (79.8%) and Minnesota (79.0%) - and the bottom three states - Mississippi (59.0%), New Mexico (60.4%) and Arkansas (61.4%). [40]

According to an April 2018 article in Motherboard, "In every single state, a portion of the population doesn't have access to broadband, and some have no access to the internet at all." [41]

Internet use in the United States 2000 to 2015 as a percentage of population
 Internet users [39] Fixed broadband
subscriptions [42] 		Wireless broadband
subscriptions [43]
Year % of
population		World
rank		 % of
population		World
rank		 % of
population		OECD rank [44]
201575%
201473%
201372%
201275%28.0%24 of 19389.8%6 of 34
201170%27.4%25 of 19477.1%7 of 34
201072%26.7%27 of 20561.1%8 of 34
200971%25.5%26 of 20146.9%7 of 30
200874%24.8%23 of 197
200775%23.2%20 of 190
200669%17 of 20620.1%22 of 174
200568%15 of 20617.2%18 of 174
200465%14 of 20412.7%18 of 151
200362%12 of 202  9.5%17 of 131
200259%13 of 207  6.9%13 of 109
200149%12 of 207  4.5%  9 of   81
200043%12 of 206  2.5%  5 of   45

Fixed (wired) and wireless broadband penetration have grown steadily, reaching peaks of 28.0% and 89.8% respectively in 2012. These rates place the U.S. above the world average of 25.9% for fixed broadband in developed countries and well above the average of 62.8% for wireless broadband in OECD countries. Wireless broadband subscriptions in the U.S. are primarily mobile-cellular broadband. Because a single Internet subscription may be shared by many people and a single person may have more than one subscription, the penetration rate will not reflect the actual level of access to broadband Internet of the population and penetration rates larger than 100% are possible.

A 2013 Pew study on home broadband adoption found that 70% of consumers have a high-speed broadband connection. About a third of consumers reported a "wireless" high-speed connection,[8] but the report authors suspect that many of these consumers have mistakenly reported wireless connections to a wired DSL or cable connection.[9] Another Pew Research Center survey, results of which were published on February 27, 2014, revealed 68% of American adults connect to the Internet with mobile devices like smartphones or tablet computers. The report also put Internet usage by American adults as high as 87%, while young adults aged between 18 and 29 were at 97%. [45]

In measurements made between April and June 2013 (Q2), the United States ranked 8th out of 55 countries with an average connection speed of 8.7 Mbit/s. This represents an increase from 14th out of 49 countries and 5.3 Mbit/s for January to March 2011 (Q1). The global average for Q2 2013 was 3.3 Mbit/s, up from 2.1 Mbit/s for Q1 2011. In Q2 2013 South Korea ranked first at 13.3 Mbit/s, followed by Japan at 12.0 Mbit/s, and Switzerland at 11.0 Mbit/s. [46] [47] [ needs update ]

Ownership

Unlike in countries such as China, Japan and New Zealand, internet infrastructure such as fibre optic cables, 4G LTE, 5G base stations, DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) and satellite networks in the United States are owned by private ISP's as opposed to the state, [48] [49] this in conjunction with high concentration of market share among four major players: AT&T (41.4%), Comcast (36.1%), Charter (33.4%) and Verizon (17.4%) as of 2021 allows for the creation of local monopolies whereby providers have little incentive to compete with each other or enter other providers' "territory" in order to fix prices and maintain market share. [50]

Since ownership of underlying infrastructure is decentralised and privatised, the construction of internet infrastructure is also fragmented and driven by profit instead of public need. [51] Given this, government attempts at funding roll out of infrastructure in rural and under-served areas where no financial incentive exists to for private companies to build any remains slow and costly, since the US government is forced to subsidise private ISP's to construct fibre optic cable networks and other key infrastructure. [52] [53]

As of 2022, a study by the Fibre Broadband Association estimated that only 43% of US households had access to fibre optic connections with "Tier 1" providers such as AT&T, Verizon, Lumen five others building 72% of fiber coverage in the United States. [54] FCC data as of 2019 indicated that some 21.3 million Americans lacked access to fixed broadband with speeds of at 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up. [55] Attempts by the US government to roll out or upgrade key internet infrastructure in any uniform or integrated way remain strongly influenced by corporate interests, lobbying at both the state and federal level and objections to what is perceived as government intervention in free market dynamics. [56] [57] [58]

Just like Standard Oil, they’ve [Verizon and others] cornered the market on a commodity that's essential for every part of American society to operate. High-speed Internet access undergirds every policy direction the country wants to take. And yet, control over this commodity is centralized in the hands of a very few providers.
—  Susan Crawford,(Former Special Assistant to President Obama for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy)

Competition

A lack of competition and consumer choice in the broadband provider market has been cited as the primary reason Internet costs can be high and speeds and access can be poor even in urban areas. [59] In the DSL market, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 required incumbent local exchange carriers to lease lines to consumers to competitive local exchange carriers, but changes to FCC regulations in 2005 significantly weakened these requirements. In the cable broadband market, the 1996 law also allowed cable companies to consolidate, resulting in a small number of large companies, which agreed to give each one a monopoly in a certain geographic area. [59]

Lack of competition has also been attributed to past stringent regulation from federal, state, and local levels, which raises barriers to entry. [60] Specifically, such criticism has referenced limitations regarding access to and development of the physical infrastructure necessary to broadband, including right-of-way to land and ownership of utility poles. The Rural Broadband Association, an organization representing rural-centric providers, has pointed to the expensive permits and procedural delays in preventing "universal" broadband access. [61] For rural areas such as the ones the RBA represents, financial returns can be insufficient and thus private actors have little incentive to compete over another in establishing relevant facilities. This problem is particularly salient for indigenous parts of the U.S, where tribal lands "have some of the lowest internet access rates of any demographic". [62] Policy goals of equity, not profit, have been driving the few access projects targeted towards these communities as a result of unrewarding demand. In other circumstances, where demand is high enough to propel investment, the fixed costs associated with building broadband infrastructure are high enough to deter even the larger providers. Sprint claims it spent "tens of millions of dollars" in their checking for compliance with NEPA, a set of environmental impact regulations, that found "no significant impact" by the conclusion and ultimately delayed their entrance in that particular geography. [63]

To remedy this anti-competitive climate, governments have worked to minimize costs entrants may incur. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 expanded access rights to pole attachments for ISPs with federal subsidies in an aim to encourage provider participation. [64] In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission granted a preemption petition requested by local utility boards in North Carolina and Tennessee over the state laws that, as a result of private provider lobbying, had legally prevented municipalities from entering the broadband market. [65] To reduce costs and expand the market, the FCC has also approved a "Dig Once" policy—a mandate that requires cities to implement broadband conduits during construction of federally-funded roads. [66] Because the financial price of laying down fiber constitutes such a large portion of deployment costs, measures sympathetic towards this step of entrance make it easier for more actors to invest.

A number of counties have also issued ordinances or grants that waive or offset certain fees associated with building infrastructure in order to encourage broadband building projects. [67] [68] [69]

Outside of regulatory and legislative action, states have at their disposal informal policies that offer other incentives for investment, such as collecting and providing local data to streamline deployment action or communication efforts. [70]

Internet taxes

In 1998 the federal Internet Tax Freedom Act halted the expansion of direct taxation of the Internet that had begun in several states in the mid-1990s. [71] The law, however, did not affect sales taxes applied to online purchases which continue to be taxed at varying rates depending on the jurisdiction, in the same way that phone and mail orders are taxed.

The absence of direct taxation of the Internet does not mean that all transactions taking place online are free of tax, or even that the Internet is free of all tax. In fact, nearly all online transactions are subject to one form of tax or another. The Internet Tax Freedom Act merely prevents states from imposing their sales tax, or any other kind of gross receipts tax, on certain online services. For example, a state may impose an income or franchise tax on the net income earned by the provider of online services, while the same state would be precluded from imposing its sales tax on the gross receipts of that provider.

Network neutrality

In the United States, net neutrality, the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) treat all data on the Internet the same, and not discriminate, [72] has been an issue of contention between network users and access providers since the 1990s. [73] [74] To elucidate the term "net neutrality", one can apply a metaphor that was given and illustrated by Michael Goodwin: In his illustration, he illustrates ISPs as the driveway that connects a home to the vast network of destinations on the internet, and net neutrality is the principle that prevents ISPs from slowing some traffic or charging a premium fee for other traffic. [75]

On August 5, 2005, the FCC reclassified some services as information services rather than telecommunications services, and replaced common carrier requirements on them with a set of four less-restrictive net neutrality principles. [76] These principles, however, are not FCC rules, and therefore not enforceable requirements. Actually implementing the principles requires either official FCC rule-making or federal legislation.

On June 6, 2010, the United States Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia in Comcast Corp. v. FCC ruled that the FCC lacks the authority as an information service, under the ancillary statutory authority of Title One of the Communications Act of 1934, to force Internet service providers to keep their networks open, while employing reasonable network management practices, to all forms of legal content. [77] On December 21, 2010, the FCC approved the FCC Open Internet Order banning cable television and telephone service providers from preventing access to competitors or certain web sites such as Netflix. The rules would not keep ISPs from charging more for faster access. [78]

On February 26, 2015, the FCC's Open Internet rules went into effect when the FCC designated the Internet as a telecommunications tool and applied to it new "rules of the road".

"[Open Internet Rules are] designed to protect free expression and innovation on the Internet and promote investment in the nation's broadband networks. The Open Internet rules are grounded in the strongest possible legal foundation by relying on multiple sources of authority, including: Title II of the Communications Act and Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. As part of this decision, the Commission also refrains (or "forbears") from enforcing provisions of Title II that are not relevant to modern broadband service. Together Title II and Section 706 support clear rules of the road, providing the certainty needed for innovators and investors, and the competitive choices and freedom demanded by consumers.

The new rules apply to both fixed and mobile broadband service. This approach recognizes advances in technology and the growing significance of mobile broadband Internet access in recent years. These rules will protect consumers no matter how they access the Internet, whether on a desktop computer or a mobile device." [79]

In summary the new rules are as follows:

On December 14, 2017, the FCC voted to reverse the 2015 Title II classifications of ISPs, [80] and the classifications fell out of use on June 11, 2018. [81]

Internet censorship

The strong protections for freedom of speech and expression against federal, state, and local government censorship are rooted in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. These protections extend to the Internet and as a result very little government mandated technical filtering occurs in the U.S. Nevertheless, the Internet in the United States is highly regulated, supported by a complex set of legally binding and privately mediated mechanisms. [82]

After a decade and half of ongoing contentious debate over content regulation, the country is still very far from reaching political consensus on the acceptable limits of free speech and the best means of protecting minors and policing illegal activity on the Internet. Gambling, cyber security, and dangers to children who frequent social networking sites—real and perceived—are important ongoing debates. Significant public resistance to proposed content restriction policies have prevented the more extreme measures used in some other countries from taking hold in the U.S. [82]

Public dialogue, legislative debate, and judicial review have produced filtering strategies in the United States that are different from those found in most of the rest of the world. Many government-mandated attempts to regulate content have been barred on First Amendment grounds, often after lengthy legal battles. [83] However, the government has been able to exert pressure indirectly where it cannot directly censor. With the exception of child pornography, content restrictions tend to rely more on the removal of content than blocking; most often these controls rely upon the involvement of private parties, backed by state encouragement or the threat of legal action. [84] In contrast to much of the rest of the world, where ISPs are subject to state mandates, most content regulation in the United States occurs at the private or voluntary level. [82]

Broadband providers

The broadband Internet access providers in the United States with more than one million subscribers at the end of Q2 2018 were:

Mbit/s: Megabit per second

Gbit/s: Gigabit per second (1 Gbit/s = 1000 Mbit/s)

ProviderSubscriptionsServices
Xfinity 32,177,000 [85]  Cable Internet access at speeds up to 2 Gbit/s [86] and Gigabit Pro Fiber in select areas with speeds up to 10 Gbit/s. [87]
AT&T 15,452,000 [85]  DSL access at speeds up to 18 Mbit/s, and FTTN VDSL2 access (AT&T Internet) at speeds up to 100 Mbit/s. Fiber access available at up to 5 Gbit/s [88]
Charter Spectrum 30,328,000 [85]  Cable Internet access at minimum speeds of 100 Mbit/s and up to 1 Gbit/s in most markets [89]
Verizon 8,510,000 [85]  DSL access at speeds of 0.5 to 15 Mbit/s, fiber access (FiOS) at speeds of 50 Mbit/s to 2 Gbit/s, and fixed wireless broadband with speeds up to 940 Mbps [90] [91]
Cox 5,560,000 [85]  Cable Internet access at speeds of 5 Mbit/s to 1 Gbit/s. [92]
Altice USA 4,290,600 [85]  Cable Internet access at speeds up to 400 Mbit/s. [93] and fiber access at speeds up to 8 Gbit/s in select markets [94]
Lumen 4,256,000 [85]  Vectored & Bonded VDSL2+ speeds up to 140/10 Mbit/s [95] [ full citation needed ] and also offers Metro Ethernet & T1 Lines, Fiber speeds up to 8 Gbit/s for consumers and up to 100 Gbit/s for business [96] Includes Centurylink and Quantum Fiber
Frontier 2,831,000 [85]  Fiber access with speeds up to 5 Gbit/s. [97]
T-Mobile US 2,122,000 [85]  Wireless home broadband with speeds typically in 72 - 245 Mbps range. [98]
Mediacom 1,468,000 [85]  Cable Internet access at speeds from 60 Mbit/s to 1 Gbit/s. [99]
Windstream 1,175,000 [85]  DSL access at speeds from 3 to 12 Mbit/s. Also offers fiber, Metro Ethernet & T1 speeds, up to 1 Gbit/s. [100]
Cable One 1,062,000 [85]  
Breezeline 707,954 [85]  
Wide Open West 518,600 [101]
TDS Telecom 506,500 [85]  Wireline DSL access and cable Internet access speeds at up to 1 Gbit/s
Consolidated 381,912 [85]  

In 2010, four of these companies ranked among the ten largest ISPs in the world in terms of subscribers: Comcast (4th), AT&T (5th), Time Warner (now Charter Spectrum) (7th), and Verizon (8th). [102]

Government policy and programs

With the advent of the World Wide Web, the commercialization of the Internet, and its spread beyond use within the government and the research and education communities in the 1990s, Internet access became an important public policy and political issue.

National Information Infrastructure

The High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 (HPCA), Pub. L.   102–194, built on prior U.S. efforts toward developing a national networking infrastructure, starting with the ARPANET in the 1960s and the funding of the National Science Foundation Network (NSFnet) in the 1980s. It led to the development of the National Information Infrastructure and included funding for a series of projects under the titles National Research and Education Network (NREN) and High-Performance Computing and Communications Initiative which spurred many significant technological developments, such as the Mosaic web browser, [103] and the creation of a high-speed fiber optic computer network. [104] The HPCA provided the framework for the transition of the Internet from a largely government sponsored network to the commercial Internet that followed.

The National Science Foundation banned commercial ISPs, permitting only government agencies and universities to use the internet until 1989. "The World" materialized as the first commercial ISP. By 1991, the NSF lifted the ban and the commercial ISP business grew rapidly. [105]

Universal Service Fund

Universal service is a program dating back to early in the 20th century with a goal to encourage/require the interconnection of telephone networks operated by different providers. Over time this grew into the more general goal of providing telephone service to everyone in the United States at a reasonable price. When Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 it provided for the creation of a Universal Service Fund to help meet the challenges and opportunities of the digital information age. The Universal Service Fund (USF) was established in 1997 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to implement the goals of the Telecommunications Act.

The Telecommunications Act requires all telecommunications companies to make equitable and non-discriminatory contributions to the USF. Under the supervision of the FCC, the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC), is responsible for allocating money from the central fund to four programs: High Cost, Low Income, Rural Health Care, and Schools and Libraries (E-rate). These programs are designed to: [106]

Telecommunications companies may, but are not required to, charge their customers a fee to recover the costs of contributing to the Universal Service fund. Consumers may see this reflected in a line-item charge labeled "Universal Service" on telecommunications bills. The amount of this charge, if any, and the method used to collect the fee from consumers is determined by the companies and is not mandated by the FCC. [106]

In October 2011 the FCC voted to phase out the USF's high-cost program that has been subsidizing voice telephone services in rural areas by shifting $4.5 billion a year in funding over several years to a new Connect America Fund focused on expanding broadband deployment. [107] [108]

Schools and Libraries Program (E-Rate)

More formally known as the Schools and Libraries Program, the E-Rate is funded from the Universal Service Fund. The E-Rate provides discounts to K-12 schools and libraries in the United States to reduce the cost of installing and maintaining telecommunications services, Internet access, and internal connections. The discounts available range from 20% to 90% depending on the poverty level and urban/rural status of the communities where the schools and libraries are located. [109]

There has been a good deal of controversy surrounding the E-Rate, including legal challenges from states and telecommunications companies. The impact of the program is hard to measure, but at the beginning of 2005 over 100,000 schools had participated in the program. Annual requests for discounts are roughly three times the $2.25 billion that is available, so while all eligible schools and libraries receive some discounts, some do not receive all of the discounts to which they are entitled under the rules of the program. [110]

Rural Health Care Program

Seventy-eight percent of rural community members have internet access. [111] Like the E-Rate, the Rural Health Care Program (RHC) is funded from the Universal Service Fund. It provides funding to eligible health care providers for telecommunications services, including broadband Internet access, necessary for the provision of health care. The goal of the program is to improve the quality of health care available to patients in rural communities by ensuring that eligible health care providers have access to affordable telecommunications services, most often to implement "tele-health and tele-medicine" services, typically a combination of video-conferencing infrastructure and high speed Internet access, to enable doctors and patients in rural hospitals to access specialists in distant cities. [112]

Over $417 million has been allocated for the construction of 62 statewide or regional broadband telehealth networks in 42 states and three U.S. territories under the Rural Health Care Pilot Program. [113]

The Healthcare Connect Fund (HCF) is a new component of the Rural Health Care Program. The HCF will provide a 65 percent discount on eligible expenses related to broadband Internet connectivity to both individual rural health care providers (HCPs) and consortia, which can include non-rural HCPs (if the consortium has a majority of rural sites). Applications under the new program will be accepted starting in late summer 2013 with funding beginning on January 1, 2014. Discounts for traditional telecommunications will continue to be available under the existing RHC Telecommunications Program. [112]

Rural broadband and advanced telecommunications

The Rural Utilities Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees several programs designed to bring the benefits of broadband Internet access and advanced telecommunications services to under served areas in the U.S. and its territories:

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

The 2009 Stimulus Bill, as it is commonly termed, was enacted by the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama on February 17, 2009. The bill provides funding for broadband grant and loan programs: [119]

National Broadband Plan

Internet access has become a vital tool in development and social progress since the start of the 21st century. As a result, Internet penetration and, more specifically, broadband Internet penetration rates are now treated as key economic indicators. The United States is widely perceived as falling behind in both its rate of broadband Internet penetration and the speed of its broadband infrastructure. [120]

For all of these reasons, there were calls for the U.S. to develop, adopt, fund, and implement a National Broadband Plan, which the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) did in March 2010, [121] after first soliciting public comments from April 2009 through February 2010. [122] The goals of the plan as described on Broadband.gov are: [123]

  1. At least 100 million U.S. homes should have affordable access to actual download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and actual upload speeds of at least 50 megabits per second by the year 2020.
  2. The United States should lead the world in mobile innovation, with the fastest and most extensive wireless networks of any nation.
  3. Every American should have affordable access to robust broadband service, and the means and skills to subscribe if they so choose.
  4. Every American community should have affordable access to at least one gigabit per second broadband service to anchor institutions such as schools, hospitals, and government buildings.
  5. To ensure the safety of the American people, every first responder should have access to a nationwide, wireless, interoperable broadband public safety network.
  6. To ensure that America leads in the clean energy economy, every American should be able to use broadband to track and manage their real-time energy consumption.

Emergency subsidies

The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States created an urgent need for many households to be connected to the Internet in order to continue work, school, or health care. The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 allocated $3.2 billion to subsidize broadband access for low-income households. The FCC approved a program of $50 monthly payments for service, plus up to $100 to purchase equipment. [124]

See also

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Municipal broadband is broadband Internet access offered by public entities. Services are often provided either fully or partially by local governments to residents within certain areas or jurisdictions. Common connection technologies include unlicensed wireless, licensed wireless, and fiber-optic cable. Many cities that previously deployed Wi-Fi based solutions, like Comcast and Charter Spectrum, are switching to municipal broadband. Municipal fiber-to-the-home networks are becoming more prominent because of increased demand for modern audio and video applications, which are increasing bandwidth requirements by 40% per year. The purpose of municipal broadband is to provide internet access to those who cannot afford internet from internet service providers and local governments are increasingly investing in said services for their communities.

The Universal Service Fund (USF) is a system of telecommunications subsidies and fees managed by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to promote universal access to telecommunications services in the United States. The FCC established the fund in 1997 in compliance with the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Originally designed to subsidize telephone service, since 2011 the fund has expanded its goals to supporting broadband universal service. The Universal Service Fund's budget ranges from $5–8 billion per year depending on the needs of the telecommunications providers. These needs include the cost to maintain the hardware needed for their services and the services themselves. In 2022 disbursements totaled $7.4 billion, split across the USF's four main programs: $2.1 billion for the E-rate program, $4.2 billion for the high-cost program, $0.6 billion for the Lifeline program, and $0.5 billion for the rural health care program.

Internet in Australia first became available on a permanent basis to universities in Australia in May 1989, via AARNet. Pegasus Networks was Australia's first public Internet provider in June 1989. The first commercial dial-up Internet Service Provider (ISP) appeared in capital cities soon after, and by the mid-1990s, almost the entire country had a range of choices of dial-up ISPs. Today, Internet access is available through a range of technologies, i.e. hybrid fibre coaxial cable, digital subscriber line (DSL), Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and satellite Internet. In July 2009, the federal government, in partnership with the industrial sector, began rolling out a nationwide fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) and improved fixed wireless and satellite access through the National Broadband Network. Subsequently, the roll out was downgraded to a Multi-Technology Mix on the promise of it being less expensive and with earlier completion. In October 2020, the federal government announced an upgrade by 2023 of NBN fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) services to FTTP for 2 million households, at a cost of A$3.5 billion.

Internet access is widely available in New Zealand, with 94% of New Zealanders having access to the internet as of January 2021. It first became accessible to university students in the country in 1989. As of June 2018, there are 1,867,000 broadband connections, of which 1,524,000 are residential and 361,000 are business or government.

Rural Internet describes the characteristics of Internet service in rural areas, which are settled places outside towns and cities. Inhabitants live in villages, hamlets, on farms and in other isolated houses. Mountains and other terrain can impede rural Internet access.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National broadband plan</span> National plans to deploy broadband Internet access

A national broadband plan is a national plan to deploy broadband Internet access. Broadband is a term normally considered to be synonymous with a high-speed connection to the internet. Suitability for certain applications, or technically a certain quality of service, is often assumed. For instance, low round trip delay would normally be assumed to be well under 150ms and suitable for Voice over IP, online gaming, financial trading especially arbitrage, virtual private networks and other latency-sensitive applications. This would rule out satellite Internet as inherently high-latency. In some applications, utility-grade reliability or security are often also assumed or defined as requirements. There is no single definition of broadband and official plans may refer to any or none of these criteria.

Connecting America: The National Broadband Plan is a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plan to improve Internet access in the United States. The FCC was directed to create the plan by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and unveiled its plan on March 16, 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Broadband mapping in the United States</span>

Broadband mapping in the United States are efforts to describe geographically how Internet access service from telephone and cable TV companies is available in terms of available speed and price. Mapping has been done on the national as well as the state level. The efforts are seen as preliminary steps towards broadband universal service.

Broadband universal service, also known as universal service obligation (USO) or universal broadband service, refers to government efforts to ensure all citizens have access to the internet. Universal voice service obligations have been expanded to include broadband service obligations in Switzerland, Finland, Spain and the UK.

Internet bottlenecks are places in telecommunication networks in which internet service providers (ISPs), or naturally occurring high use of the network, slow or alter the network speed of the users and/or content producers using that network. A bottleneck is a more general term for a system that has been reduced or slowed due to limited resources or components. The bottleneck occurs in a network when there are too many users attempting to access a specific resource. Internet bottlenecks provide artificial and natural network choke points to inhibit certain sets of users from overloading the entire network by consuming too much bandwidth. Theoretically, this will lead users and content producers through alternative paths to accomplish their goals while limiting the network load at any one time. Alternatively, internet bottlenecks have been seen as a way for ISPs to take advantage of their dominant market-power increasing rates for content providers to push past bottlenecks. The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has created regulations stipulating that artificial bottlenecks are in direct opposition to a free and open Internet.

Net bias is the counter-principle to net neutrality, which indicates differentiation or discrimination of price and the quality of content or applications on the Internet by ISPs. Similar terms include data discrimination, digital redlining, and network management.

Internet rush hour is the time period when the majority of Internet users are online at the same time. Typically, in the UK the peak hours are between 7 and 11 pm. During this time frame, users commonly experience slowness while browsing or downloading content. The congestion experienced during the rush hour is similar to transportation rush hour, where demand for resources outweighs capacity.

<i>Verizon Communications Inc. v. FCC</i> (2014)

Verizon Communications Inc. v. Federal Communications Commission, 740 F.3d 623, was a case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacating portions of the FCC Open Internet Order of 2010, which the court determined could only be applied to common carriers and not to Internet service providers. The case was initiated by Verizon, which would have been subjected to the proposed FCC rules, though they had not yet gone into effect. The case has been regarded as an important precedent on whether the FCC can regulate network neutrality.

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