There is good news in the latest Ookla broadband report. It found that states in which 60% or more of Speedtest users achieved the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) minimum standard for fixed broadband speeds — 100 Mbps downstream and 20 Mbps upstream — rose, from 22 states and the District of Columbia in the second half of 2024 to 38 states and D.C. in the first half of this year.
Overall, the report found that broadband speeds are increasing across the country, while states with low populations and vast terrain continue to face challenges.
The “50 U.S. States Broadband Speed Performance” report for the first half 2025 found that the digital divide between urban and rural users improved in the first half of 2025, with 33 states seeing the gap between the percentage of fixed urban users and fixed rural users receiving the minimum broadband speeds decline.
Seventeen states saw that gap grow compared to the second half of 2024. (Ookla uses the Census Bureau’s urban-rural classification to determine which users are urban versus rural.)
The report found that four urban states — Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, and Rhode Island — and one rural state, North Dakota, deliver at least 100/20 Mbps service to 70% of their users.
The situation was reversed for low Earth orbit (LEO) provider Starlink. In 26 out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia, rural users get better broadband speeds than their urban counterparts using the technology.
The improvements come from many sources. Starlink, fixed wireless access (FWA) service, the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program, and other programs are driving speeds.
“Many ISPs are spending billions every year to expand their fiber footprints,” Ookla’s editorial director and the author of the broadband report Sue Marek wrote.
“AT&T increased the number of fiber locations it serves by 2.3 million in the first half of 2025, from 28 million at the end of 2024 to 30.3 million at the end of June 2025. Likewise, Frontier Communications (which is being acquired by Verizon) added 655,000 new fiber locations in the first half of 2025.”
There are challenges ahead. Last week, Reviews.org — working from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey (ACS) one-year estimates — found that almost eight million households in the United States lack connectivity and are not yet online.
