A study released earlier last month found that California still leads the US in access to broadband Internet connections. Unfortunately, there is still a sizable “technology gap” that leaves 1.4 million California state residents without broadband access.
InformationWeek.com is reporting that an 83 page report released by the California Broadband Task Force (CBTF) shows that around half of all Californians have broadband Internet access at home. But as much as 42% of California’s lower income families don’t even have access to a computer, much less a high speed Internet connection.
As you might expect, California’s large urban areas lead the state in the highest percentage of homes with broadband access, while lower-density rural area are the least likely to have broadband. For example, in the northern Sierra Mountain area, less than 60% of the region has access to high-speed Internet connections.
Although these numbers might suggest that California still has a long way to go when it comes to standardizing broadband Internet access, the reality is that the state leads the United States in access to broadband Internet, as it has done for several years now.
Unfortunately though, the US is still lagging behind internationally when it comes to broadband access. For example, even California is quite behind when compared to many European countries, especially those in northern Europe and Scandinavia. Officially, California ranks 10th internationally for access to broadband Internet.
But when you consider that California is light years ahead of many other US states when it comes to broadband — Mississippi or West Virginia both come to mind off-hand — you can begin to see how far behind the U. S. is lagging in developing widespread broadband technology.
Scandinavian countries offer a stark contrast to the “hit and miss” broadband access currently available in the United States. In Norway, for example, every town with a population greater than 20,000 is wired for broadband access, and a surprising number of tiny rural areas are also wired.
And when it comes to so-called “very high speed” broadband — connections of 10 MB per second or greater — the US is also trailing behind the Europeans. Heavily populated California cities have the highest percentage of “very high speed” broadband, with San Francisco boasting more than 99% coverage throughout the Bay Area. But in many mid-western cities, that figure sinks to less than 30%.
This latest study shows that, while there are high-tech urban areas in the US that feature almost ubiquitous access to broadband Internet — particularly in California and the Northeast — the vast majority of American states still have a long way to go.
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