Barriers to Broadband (Infographic)

Editor's note: Recently the FCC estimated that about half of the residents living in rural America can’t get the advanced broadband service that metropolitan areas take for granted. Some rural residents can't get any Internet connection at all. And even some city dwellers lack access: At Government Technology’s Los Angeles Digital Government Summit in August, CIO Ted Ross said that almost a third of the city does not have broadband Internet access.


But as broadband in the United States inches toward utility status, Government Technology asks representatives from government, industry and nonprofits why the broadband equity gap exists and how to fix it in our five-part series: The Need for Speed.

In the fifth and final installment of our series, we give a quick look at the states that restrict municipal broadband -- along with each state's average connection speed and percentage of citizens that live in a home with high-speed access.