The Federal Communication Commission has published a new round of Form 477 data on fixed household broadband connections by Census tract. The new data is from Internet service provider reports filed in June 2015.
This time, the FCC has given us each Census tract’s proportion of households with fixed Internet connections at speeds of 10 mbps down and 1 mbps up, according to the providers’ reports. (Last time, back in April, the agency used a much lower benchmark of just 3 mbps — see the results for Cleveland and Detroit here.)
10 mbps is not an especially fast Internet speed standard for 2016. But the differences in broadband penetration at this modest speed among neighborhoods in greater Cleveland and Detroit, as revealed by the new FCC data, are pretty stark.
Here’s a map of this new data for Cuyahoga County. (Hint: Click the little double arrow on the left to open it in full screen mode):
And here’s Wayne County…
The majority of households in most suburban Cuyahoga and Wayne County neighborhoods have cable or DSL Internet connections at speeds exceeding 10 mbps (i.e. standard cable modem or AT&T UVerse connections).
The majority of households in most Cleveland and Detroit neighborhoods… don’t.