The U.S. Census’ 2023 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates came on line this morning at data.census.gov/.   Once again, CYC is taking this opportunity to compare the recent home broadband connection rates of  all U.S. cities of 100,000 households or more, in what we call our “worst-connected large cities” list.

We regret to report that Cleveland and Detroit still led that list in 2023.

Each year, we compare all U.S. 100K-household cities (there are 86 this year) on the basis of three numbers calculated from ACS Table 28004: Presence And Types Of Internet Subscriptions In Household for the prior year:

1. Each city’s total number of households;
2. The number of those total households which lack “Broadband of any type” (which includes households with Internet only via mobile data plans); and
3. The number of those total households which lack “Broadband such as cable, fiber optic or DSL”.

The second and third of these numbers are calculated as percentages of the first, and the cities’s percentages are ranked highest to lowest, i.e. “worst connected” to “best connected”, like this:

Above: Excerpt from CYC’s new “Worst connected U.S. cities” list.

Click here to see CYC’s complete list of “Worst connected U.S. cities with 100,000 or more households, 2023”. (Document opens in new tab. Click on it for full size.)

In 2023, only five cities had wireline (cable-fiber-DSL) non-connection rates above 30%.  Detroit topped the list at 32.19%, followed by Cleveland at 32.15%. Given the ACS’s margins of error, this has to be called a tie for first place.

But there was no tie in the percentage of households with no broadband connections of any type. 14.7% of Cleveland households — about 25,000 — still had no broadband Internet subscriptions at all last year, even in the form of data plans for mobile devices. Detroit was in second-worst place but not close, at 12.6%. Only nine other cities, including Toledo and Cincinnati,  had more than 10% of their households in this situation.

For many years, and especially since 2020, both Cleveland and Detroit have seen strenuous efforts by community organizations, public officials and funders to lower barriers to broadband access and digital literacy.  The bad news from the Census today: We still have  a long, long way to go.

You can see past versions of CYC’s worst-connected big cities releases at these links: 2021, 2019, 2018, 2017,  2016, 2013.