Unconnected America

Now that we are hopefully approaching the end of the pandemic a lot of discussion has started about the future of work. A lot of commentators appear to think that working from home could be here to stay for many workers. For that to happen people need good access to broadband speeds. 

Unfortunately not everyone in the USA has access to broadband internet speeds. In This is a Map of America's Broadband Gap Verge has mapped counties where less than 15 percent of households have broadband speed.All the counties colored blue on this map have less than 15 percent of households with an internet speed over 25Mbps or above.You can also hover over individual counties on the map to view the percentage of households that have broadband speed. 

To create the map Verge used data from Microsoft. This data reveals that there are many counties where a large majority of counties don't have broadband speeds. For example in Lincoln County, Washington only five percent of households can access the internet at 25Mbps or above.

You can find out which companies offer broadband services in your area and the speeds that they offer using the FCC Broadband Map. Enter your address into the Federal Communications Commission's interactive map and you can view the names of all your local broadband providers and the upload and download speeds that they offer.

The FCC Broadband Map is color-coded to show the number of fixed residential broadband providers in each census block in the USA. If you click on a census block on the map you can view a list of the available broadband providers, the technology they offer (cable, ADSL or satellite) and their upload and download speeds (which I assume are self-reported by the companies and not the actual speeds experienced by consumers).