When non-cable Internet providers—outlets like AT&T or Verizon—choose which communities to offer the fastest connections, they don’t juice up their networks so everyone in their service area has the option of buying quicker speeds. Instead, they tend to favor the wealthy over the poor, according to an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity.

The Center’s data analysis found that the largest non-cable Internet providers collectively offer faster speeds to about 40 percent of the population they serve nationwide in wealthy areas compared with just 22 percent of the population in poor areas. That leaves tens of millions of Americans with the choice of either purchasing an expensive connection from the only provider in their area—typically a cable company—or just doing the best they can with slower speeds. Middle-income areas don’t fare much better, with a bit more than 27 percent of the population having access to a DSL provider’s fastest speeds. The Center reached its conclusions by merging the latest Federal Communications Commission (FCC) data with income information from the US Census Bureau.

The FCC, which regulates the industry, defines broadband as a download speed of at least 25 megabits per second. Those speeds are mostly only available through wired connections to the home. It’s the speed that the agency believes is needed to support multiple devices on a single connection, stream uninterrupted movies and educational videos, upload photos, and allow for future applications such as in-home health services and networked homes.

The non-cable Internet providers—the four largest are AT&T Inc, Verizon Communications Inc, CenturyLink Inc, and Frontier Communications Corp—hook up customers over telephone wires that are Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL), or they use hybrid networks that include some fiber connections near (and sometimes directly to) homes. The Center included all types of connection in its analysis. These companies account for nearly 40 percent of the 92 million Internet connections nationwide.

Cable companies, such as Comcast Corp and Charter Communications Inc, operate under a different set of conditions. These providers offer the same fast speeds to almost every community they serve, in part because of franchise agreements with local governments. But a previous Center investigation and other reports have shown that cable firms sometimes avoid lower-income or hard-to-reach areas based on how franchise agreements are written. Poor areas not served by the cable companies are not included in the Center’s analysis, which results in what seems like an equitable distribution of speeds across income levels.

In addition, Internet speeds sent over coaxial cable used by the cable firms don’t degrade over long distances as they do over copper telephone lines. That means that in order to keep speeds from slowing, DSL carriers must make costly investments in equipment, including fiber cable in some places.

It would seem DSL providers’ coverage decisions are simply smart business. After all, the companies and economists say, providers must invest millions of dollars in equipment to boost speeds over relatively short distances in their service areas. The best way to get a substantive return on investment is to provide the service in wealthier areas. Besides, fewer lower-income households purchase a home Internet connection than do their higher-income neighbors.

But broadband advocates, economists—those in the United States, Europe, and the White House—as well as the FCC argue that a fast Internet connection is now so crucial to managing daily life and seizing opportunities for advancement that it’s an economic necessity for households and communities. And they further argue that having a choice between two providers is essential to keeping prices down.

“Society said it did not matter if you could pay for electricity; we wanted everyone to have it. Society said we would not limit dial tone to those who could pay the most, we gave it to all,” said telecommunications lawyer Gerard Lederer of Best Best & Krieger LLC in Washington, DC, in an e-mail. “Broadband is quickly becoming that utility, and if applications only work at high speeds, then the universal availability of that speed must be the goal, otherwise you are providing everyone with water, just some of the water is not drinkable.”

Where the high speeds are

High-speed connections will only become more important for Americans. As families simultaneously use more than one connected device at home, tools like health-care apps become more prevalent, and cars and household appliances become networked, broadband demand is forecast to more than double in just the next four years. The increased Internet traffic will require ever faster speeds to allow applications to work.

That’s why the FCC voted last year to increase the definition of broadband from a download speed of 4 Mbps and 1 Mbps upload to 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up. The Center’s analysis looked at the availability of just download speeds, using the FCC’s 25 Mbps definition for broadband.

About the data To analyze Internet speeds that non-cable providers offer in their service areas, the Center for Public Integrity combined these data sets: To analyze Internet speeds that non-cable providers offer in their service areas, the Center for Public Integrity combined these data sets: • The Federal Communication Commission’s Form 477 Broadband Deployment Data, as of Dec. 31, 2015, the latest available; • 2010 U.S. Census population data at the census block level, which is the most recent publicly available; • 2010-2014 American Community Survey income and demographic data at the census block group level; The Center analyzed all Internet service offered by the nation’s four-largest non-cable providers: AT&T Inc, Verizon Communications Inc, CenturyLink Inc and Frontier Communications Corp. The Center considered all types of connections offered by these providers, including fiber cable. As a point of comparison, the Center also analyzed all Internet service offered by the four largest cable providers: Comcast Corp, Charter Communications, Time Warner Inc, and Cox Enterprises Inc. The Center used the FCC’s definition of broadband, a download speed of 25 megabits per second and higher, to determine if broadband was offered by consumer providers in each census block group. The Center did not include upload speeds in its analysis. Income for census block groups were divided into quintiles based on median household income and the number of households in each census block group. The five census block group quintiles are: 1) Below $34,783

2) From $34,783 to $46,875

3) From $46,876 to $60,223

4) From $60,224 to $80,694

5) Greater than $80,694 The Center’s analysis represents 99.5 percent of the population as measured by the Census Bureau in 2010. It includes 96.9 percent of all census blocks from 2010 and 99.1 percent of census block groups in the 2014 American Community Survey. The Center did not include census block groups with no reported median income.



But the opportunity to purchase the higher speeds or choose between two high-speed providers is unequal, determined in large part by a family’s earnings, the Center’s analysis shows. Without exception, the nation’s four largest non-cable Internet providers offer their highest speeds to more wealthy communities than lower-income ones.

An earlier Center investigation found that people living in the poorest areas nationwide—where median household incomes are less than $34,800—are five times more likely not to have access to broadband than households in the wealthiest areas—where the median income is more than $80,700. Many times, the Center found, high-speed Internet service stops at the edge of low-income communities.

In this analysis, the Center drilled down into the data to learn how providers manage speeds within their service areas and which carriers offer service equally across income. The findings: DSL providers in particular favor the wealthy over lower-income communities in providing their fastest speeds.

Frontier Communications, the nation’s fourth-largest DSL Internet provider, favors its wealthy communities more than most. The Norwalk, Connecticut-based firm offers high-speed broadband to 38 percent of the population in the wealthiest communities—those with median household incomes of more than $80,700—according to the Center’s analysis. But Frontier only offers its fastest speeds to 11 percent of the people living in areas where the median household income is less than $34,800.

AT&T, the nation’s largest DSL provider, offers speeds at 25 Mbps and higher to about the same proportion of wealthy, middle, and low-income areas. But those speeds are available to just a little more than 5 percent of the population in its national service area, about 6.6 million people out of a total of 123 million people AT&T’s service area covers, according to the Center’s analysis. The vast majority of the population in the communities AT&T serves, 72 percent, have access to sub-broadband speeds, between 10 and 24 Mbps. Who has access to those speeds varies greatly by income. More than 82 percent of the people living in the wealthiest areas can buy those speeds, while 66 percent of the people in the poorest communities can, the Center’s investigation found.

Low-income regions are not the only ones that have less chance to buy fast download speeds. Some DSL providers ignore middle-income areas at nearly the same rates. Verizon provides broadband speeds to 64 percent of the population in wealthy communities where it has service, but only to 49 percent of the population in the middle-income areas, those with a household median income between $46,900 and $60,200.

AT&T, Verizon, and Frontier did not reply to requests for comment.

CenturyLink’s track record is similar. The Monroe, Louisiana-based company, which has almost 6 million subscribers nationwide, offers broadband to 72 percent of people living in wealthy areas in which it operates compared with 57 percent of the population in middle-income communities—just 3.5 percentage points more than in the company’s poorest areas.

CenturyLink denies the unequal access is purposeful.

“CenturyLink does not engage in discriminatory practices in broadband deployment,” a CenturyLink spokeswoman said in an e-mail. “We focus our network investments in a fiscally responsible manner by investing in areas that allow us to take advantage of current assets, such as existing conduit and fiber routes, while reaching the largest number of potential customers.”

But that is exactly the problem, said Hannah Sassaman, policy director at the Media Mobilizing Project, a community organizer and support group for low-income families in Philadelphia.

“It’s fine for an incumbent to say they want to leverage their existing assets, but we have to remember that many of these incumbents have been cherry picking what communities they serve for decades,” Sassaman said. “Of course companies that want to build where they already have conduit and fiber will be doing so in neighborhoods that already have high-speed access and competition.”

And that means in more wealthy neighborhoods, Sassaman said.

The FCC believes its Lifeline program, which provides low-cost Internet access to qualifying households, will lead to faster Internet speeds for lower-income families. But FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn acknowledges that more needs to be done.

“There are certainly challenges in bringing communications services to those who can least afford it," Clyburn said in an e-mail. "Regardless, those who are less affluent should not be relegated to receiving second-class broadband.”

Listing image by Allan Holmes/Center for Public Integrity