Delaware ranks the best and Alaska the worst among states for broadband, according to a new report from Broadband Now.
The report based its rankings on a combination of internet coverage, prices and speeds.
Following Delaware, the top states, in order, were New Hampshire, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Virginia and Washington. Just ahead of Alaska, in terms of the worst states for broadband were West Virginia, Arkansas, Kansas, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Missouri and Hawaii.
Among the report’s key findings:
- The availability of low-priced broadband has increased across the US: There is now only a single state with less than one fifth of the population having access to a broadband plan for $60 per month or less. This is down sharply from 25 states in 2022. Nevertheless there is only one state, Wyoming, where more than half of residents have access to such a plan.
- Big differences in latency still exist: There is a huge geographic disparity between states that do well in this metric, like New York or Washington with median round trip times less than 7.5 milliseconds, and states that do poorly, like Hawaii and Massachusetts with median round trip times greater than 61 milliseconds.
There’s a recent FCC effort to boost speeds in unserved and underserved areas.
Readers can check where their state ranks in this Broadband Now blog post. Nationally, only 39% of Americans are getting 100Mbps down.
