Thanks to Deb Miller Slipek for sending me the Rural Broadband at a Glance report from the USDA Economic Research Service. The statistics are from 2007.

Here are some of the stats I found most interesting:

Percent of households with at least one person going online somewhere (US):
Urban: 72.6
Rural: 63.3
Total: 71.1

Percent of households with Internet access (US)
Urban: 63.7
Rural: 51.9
Total: 61.8

Percent of households with at least one person going online somewhere (Midwest):
Urban: 74
Rural: 65.7
Total: 72.1

Percent of households with Internet access (US)
Urban: 63.1
Rural: 53.7
Total: 60.9

I thought the discrepancies in the Midwest were interesting. That’s nearly a 10-point difference in Internet access!

The report gave plenty of uses for Internet and broadband, pointing out the general need for broadband for education, healthcare, business and consumer use. I don’t know that they emphasized as strongly as I might have the greater need for broadband in rural areas to take advantage of remote services in these areas.

They expressed the need for more and better data around rural broadband use – providing information to the zip code level, they point out, is not enough. They also point out the fact that the FCC has been slow to up the definition of broadband and even the most recent definition is insufficient because “includes a wide array of technologies with varying reliability and quality, making economic impact analysis and discussion of broadband Internet service challenging.”