Seventy-five percent of rural and suburban/rural adults believe that high-quality internet is very important to their households, according to a study commissioned by the Fiber Broadband Association (FBA) and conducted by RVA LLC.
The study found that those with the slowest service prized fiber the most. Rural respondents with less than 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload ranked fiber broadband higher than the other options combined. The other technologies were fixed wireless broadband (which only 4% said had the best performance), traditional satellite, mobile wireless, DSL and low earth orbit (LEO) satellite.
FBA says 2,650 Americans were surveyed.
“Fiber broadband stood out overwhelmingly in our study,” said Michael Render, principal at RVA LLC. “The responses demonstrated a strong consumer awareness of fiber’s superior performance, especially in communities that have experienced first-hand the limitations of other broadband technologies.”
The optimal technology for individual situations is a huge issue moving forward as technologies evolve and cost/benefit analyses shift. Nowhere is this more evident than in the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program.
Last week, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released new rules for the program. They eliminated the preference for fiber that previously was an element of the selection process — a move the FBA study seems to call into question.
During the Biden Administration, the program used three criteria consisting of priority, reliability, and extremely high-cost technologies. That has shifted to allowing technologies to be eligible if they can serve a “priority broadband project.”
The definition is that the projects provide broadband service at 100/20 Mbps speeds, have a latency of less than or equal to 100 milliseconds and “can easily scale speeds over time to meet the evolving connectivity needs of households and businesses and support the deployment of 5G, successor wireless technologies and other advanced services.”
