As online services and devices become increasingly ingrained and necessary in our lives in the modern world, the Internet infrastructure and service providers that connect our devices to these online services has become increasingly important as well. Americans depend on reliable and fast broadband internet to conduct their business everyday in the 21st century.
Yet, despite this necessity, millions of Americans have little to no access to broadband internet, most of them in rural areas where Internet Service Providers deem it unprofitable to provide broadband service (Fingas 2018). A lack of fast broadband Internet also means a lack of new business investment in the community, as most modern businesses require fast, reliable internet just to run, causing many rural communities to take things into their own hands (Kang 2017).
These issues are magnified by the gross inaccuracies often found on reports analyzing broadband connectivity, creating little motivation by policy makers to fix things (Lenz 2018). This, and other factors like unaffordable broadband prices, exacerbates inequality, by restricting opportunities for communication, education, and employment to those who need them most, like unemployed citizens (Fingas 2018). This project attempts to visualize these disparities in broadband access and inequality from a selection of publicly available data on the matter.
| Name/Link | Rows | Vars | Unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| NYS Broadband Availability | 1,635 | 24 | Municipality |
| People Without Internet | 821 | 23 | Municipality |
| Urban Rate Broadband Survey | 9,122 | 14 | ISP in Market |
| American Community Survey 2017 | 3,108 | 36 | County |
Fingas, Jon. 2018. “Microsoft Says the Rural Broadband Divide Is Worse Than You Think.” Engadget. https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/05/microsoft-study-on-rural-broadband-shortfall/.
Kang, Cecilia. 2017. “How to Give Rural America Broadband? Look to the Early 1900s.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/technology/how-to-give-rural-america-broadband-look-to-the-early-1900s.html.
Lenz, Lyz. 2018. “Iowa: Rural Broadband, and the Unknown Costs of the Digital Divide.” Colombia Journalism Review. https://www.cjr.org/special_report/midterms-2018-iowa-rural-broadband.php/.