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.
The analysts found that the number of offline Americans declined from 10.2 million in 2023 to 7.9 million in 2024, a drop of almost 20%.
There was good news from beleaguered states. West Virginia had the greatest improvement of internet connectivity with a 2.55% increase, the report said. It was followed by Arkansas, which was up 2.42 percentage points, and Mississippi (up 2.26 percentage points).
Reviews.org culled several takeaways from the Census Bureau data:
- 94% of U.S. households have internet access. This is the highest rate ever recorded by the Census Bureau.
- The U.S. “offline population” has fallen nearly 70% since 2015, from 26.9 million to 7.9 million households. This is the biggest decade of digital inclusion on record.
- Only 0.9% — about 100,000 households — still use dial-up Internet. This follows AOL’s shutdown of its remaining service in August.
- The report said the southern and Appalachian states, which include West Virginia, Arkansas, and Mississippi, saw the largest gains in connectivity this year.
“But it’s not just the least-connected states making improvements,” the report said. “States like Delaware, Maine, and Vermont have also made gains (around 1 to 1.5 percentage points) to show the digital divide is closing even in well-connected regions.”
The ten with the highest percentage of connected households were New Hampshire (95.37%); Nevada (95.18%); Washington (95.09%); California (95.08%); Colorado (96.01%); New Jersey (94.89%); Maryland (94.50%); Massachusetts (94.47%); Delaware (94.38%); and Florida (94.33%).
The federal government seems ready to increase connectivity among Americans in a couple of ways. During its September monthly meeting, the Federal Communications Commission moved to ease wireless and wireline deployment and to remove antiquated rules and requirements.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) seems to be moving to enfranchise more Americans as well. The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program has moved into a more active phase. The goal of the undertaking is to bring service to more areas without services.
