ISP Report Cards

ISP Reports evaluates internet service provider data submitted to the FCC for every city, county, zip code, and state in the United States to come up with a grade for how well built out the internet infrastructure is. The following components are evaluated:

Provider Count

How many providers are available in this location? This gives a good estimate of how competitive the market is and what kinds of options are available. The count can range from a low of 1 – meaning there’s a monopoly, to 6 or more, which in a city could indicate a healthy level of competition. In a state the number is naturally going to be higher.

Fiber Availability

We use fiber availability (percent of households who have access to a fiber connection) as a gauge of what quality of internet is available. Nowadays nearly everyone in the United States has SOME sort of option for internet, but that could be through a 56k or fixed wireless connection which is no longer sufficient for the typical internet used. 33% of places in the United States still have no fiber availability at all, and 18% of places have 90%+ of households who have fiber as an option.

Download Speed

The download speeds available to a place are important for evaluating the level of demand that place can satisfy. We use a weighted averaged max download speed in order to get a good sense of not just the maximum available in that place, but what maximum speed most people can actually get.