U.S. vs. European Broadband Deployment: What Do the Data Say?

UPenn

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Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition

University of Pennsylvania Law School
3501 Sansom Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6204
Email: ctic@law.upenn.edu

About the Report

Both the European Commission (EC) and the U.S. government have recently conducted or commissioned studies providing detailed information about the extent of broadband coverage as of the end of 2011 and 2012. These studies report coverage levels for a wide range of speed tiers and technologies in both urban and rural areas. Although the European mapping study focuses on Next Generation Access (NGA), which it defines to be service providing download speeds of at least 30 Mbps, a close analysis reveals that the study actually reports data for 25 Mbps service. Data from these studies served as the basis for analysis in this report.

These mapping studies were supplemented by other studies conducted or commissioned by the EC or the Federal Communications Commission that examine other key information, such as broadband investment, pricing, and download speeds.

The author thanks Broadband for America for its financial support for the study.