The FCC has released its 2020 Broadband Deployment Report, intended to update Congress on the progress the country has made in narrowing the digital divide. Just as with the 2018 and 2019 Broadband Deployment Reports, the 2020 report was adopted along party lines. According to this year’s report: (1) the number of Americans lacking access to fixed terrestrial broadband service at 25/3 Mbps continued to decline, going down by more than 14% in 2018 and more than 30% over the course of 2017 and 2018; (2) the number of Americans without access to 4G LTE mobile broadband with a median speed of 10/3 Mbps declined approximately 54% between 2017 and 2018; and (3) the vast majority of Americans—more than 85%—now have access to fixed terrestrial broadband service at 250/25 Mbps, a 47% increase since 2017, with the number of rural Americans having access to 250/25 Mbps fixed terrestrial broadband service more than tripling between 2016 and 2018. The 2020 Broadband Deployment Report is based on data collected as of Q4 2019.
