I was looking up a statistic for someone and I thought others might be interested too in how Minnesota rural broadband access compares with the rest of the US. Here’s the quick answer:
National Numbers:
- Rural fiber access: 11.1 percent
- Urban fiber access: 28.5 percent
Minnesota Numbers:
- Rural fiber access: 13.1 percent
- Urban fiber access: 26.8 percent
Also I looked at percentage of users with access to better than 25 Mbps download speed and better than 6 Mbps up. (That’s combination of the FCC definition of broadband at 25 Mbps down and 3 up and the Minnesota definition of 10-20 Mbps down and 5-10 up.)
National Numbers:
- Rural: 54.6 percent download and 45.5 percent up
- Urban: 94.0 percent download and 92.5 percent up
Minnesota Numbers:
- Rural: 66.1 percent download and 62.1 percent up
- Urban: 99.2 percent download and 88.2 percent up
I got this info from a National Broadband Map report with data from June 2014; published March 2015.