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Weak Broadband Infrastructure

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Research strongly indicates that weak broadband infrastructure negatively impacts streaming adoption in US rural areas; it also indicates that rural consumers utilize streaming services at almost equal rates to their urban counterparts, when given appropriate broadband speeds. The US telecom industry target for mass 5G deployment is the end of this decade. Overview Hi there, and thanks for asking Wonder! I understand you'd like an analysis of the latest research available on internet broadband speeds and the effective streaming rates of broadband across the US. In short, your surmise is correct: broadband infrastructure is currently far less available in rural and tribal areas than it is in urban areas in the US, which correlates with the …show more content…

However, the FCC has also published a map of fixed residential broadband services deployment at 25/3 Mbps. This map provides the most recently updated government statistics, at June 2016. According to this map, 25/3 Mgbs deployment is as follows across demographics: - urban: 97.8% access - rural: 72% access - tribal: 71% access - all: 92.8% access These numbers, while improved from the 2016 report figures, still indicate a significant gap between urban and rural/tribal access. BROADBAND IMPACT ON STREAMING The 2016 Broadband Report also found that "Americans living in rural and urban areas adopt broadband at similar rates where 25 Mbps/ 3 Mbps service is available: 28 percent in rural areas and 30 percent in urban areas." When compared to the consistently lower rates of streaming adoption in rural areas, this finding indicates that the lack of infrastructure in rural areas has a significant impact on OTT/SVOD/streaming

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