Leichtman Research Group, Inc. (LRG) conducted its annual survey on household broadband usage and found that 90% of U.S. homes now have broadband. The survey was conducted in October and November 2023 and surveyed 1,767 adults across the country. LRG says broadband penetration is up from 81% in 2018 and 57% in 2008.

Here are some of the key findings from the survey:
·         The survey said that 92% of homes have some type of Internet connection, meaning that 2% of homes are using something that is not considered to be broadband. My guess is that these homes might perhaps be using only a cell phone for home broadband. LRG says this number is up from 83% in 2018 and 76% in 2008.
·         60% of homes are satisfied with their broadband service. This is the highest satisfaction ever found by LRG and compares to 53% in 2018 and 59% in 2013.
·         Only 5% said they were very dissatisfied with broadband (chose from 1 to 3 on a scale of 10)
·         70% of households say that their Internet connection meets the household needs (which means it doesn’t for 30% of homes).
·         42% of households don’t know the download speed they should be receiving, down from 59% in 2018.
·         22% said that their ISP is the only option available to them.
·         87% of households use a laptop or desktop computer.
·         64% of homes with no home broadband don’t own a computer or laptop.

Surveys like this are always of interest to me since my consulting company conducts a lot of surveys every year. The vast majority of the surveys we conduct are in communities where there is not great broadband. This might mean a rural county with a large number of homes with no fast broadband connection or cities where residents have expressed a lot of desire for a better broadband alternative.

In all of the surveys we’ve done, the percentage of folks who are not happy with broadband has been higher than shown by a nationwide survey – as might be expected.

For example, in the surveys we’ve done in the last year, anywhere from 30% to 50% of households with students at home say that their home broadband isn’t good enough to support homework.

The LRG survey shows that only 5% of homes are unhappy with broadband, but in the communities we’ve studied, it’s typically around 30% unhappiness, sometimes higher.

Our surveys also show a lot less competition. We recently did a business survey where 90% of the businesses in a county said they felt like they only had one realistic choice for an ISP.

Note that I’m not criticizing the LRG results, and the company results from these surveys track well from year to year. Instead, our surveys show that broadband is a lot worse in rural counties than in the big urban and suburban areas where most people live.

If anything, our surveys demonstrate that the urban/rural digital divide is real – and it doesn’t just mean rural homes with no broadband. In our surveys, there is generally a lot of dissatisfaction from customers in the County seat and not just in rural areas. Our surveys show that the big telcos and cable companies don’t perform as well in smaller markets and that customers are far less satisfied in every aspect of broadband compared to the nationwide numbers measured by LRG.