The Digital Divide Has Been Narrowing for Years, but a Regression Could Be Coming

About 2.8 million American households added an internet subscription in 2023, according to Census data released earlier this week. 

That’s less than the 3.2 million households that got online in 2022, and the second smallest jump since the Census Bureau began collecting the data in 2015. Still, that means 92.2% of American households now have an internet subscription -- up from 76.7% in 2015. 

In other words, the digital divide continues to narrow. This is a term that refers to the gap between those who have access to -- and the means to afford -- a speedy broadband internet connection and those who don't. It’s been the target of billions of dollars of government spending -- an infrastructure investment on par with the money spent in the 1930s to bring electricity to rural America. 

“The story is that the Emergency Broadband Benefit and Affordable Connectivity Program likely helped get a lot of folks on,” said Blair Levin, a former FCC chief of staff and telecom industry analyst at New Street Research. “With the outstanding question being, how many did we lose when the ACP went away? We won't really know for some time.”

The $3.2 billion Emergency Broadband Benefit provided low-income households with a $50 monthly subsidy toward home internet. When those funds ran out, it was replaced by the Affordable Connectivity Program, which lowered the subsidy to $30 monthly, or $75 for people living on tribal lands. 

The percentage of households in the US with an internet connection has increased every year for the past eight years, going from 77% in 2015 to 92% in 2023, but the pandemic was a particularly strong catalyst for narrowing the digital divide, when Congress approved $90 billion in spending to close the broadband gap for good. Some of that went to addressing affordability. 

Joel Thayer, president of the Digital Progress Institute, told me that part of this trend could also be the natural result of an increasingly online world. 

“In general, it makes sense that there are high upticks on broadband subscriptions as more everyday items and services (even essential services, like telehealth) are operating over these networks,” he said. 

Low-income households came online in the greatest numbers

When you dig into the census numbers, it becomes clear that the majority of new internet subscribers came from the lowest income groups. Before the pandemic, 6 million Americans making less than $20,000 a year had no internet subscription; by 2023, that number had decreased to 3.4 million. 

“The ACP was doing what it set out to do,” Levin said.

The ACP had enrolled 23 million households by the time it expired in May 2024. How many of those people didn’t have internet before the program is an open question. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel told Congress in December 2023 that between 20% and 22% of ACP subscribers had no internet subscription before the ACP; an earlier FCC survey published in January 2023 found that it was 16%. 

“I think we should all be incredibly sad and frustrated that the income group under $20,000 is still only at 77.5%,” Angela Siefer, executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, told CNET. “That tells us there's a lot more work to do.”

“The ACP in particular, has been by far the most effective broadband adoption program we have, especially among veterans and senior citizens,” Thayer said.

A note on census data

There are a couple of grains of salt to take with this census data. For one, it counts cellular data plans as broadband subscriptions -- something that’s not done by the FCC or any other government body. That’s why you’ll see some significant differences between the census’s numbers and other organizations’. 

“Census data has always mystified me,” Doug Dawson, a longtime expert in broadband and author of the popular Pots and Pans blog, told CNET. “As much as the FCC wants to brag about a job well done, they have never claimed 92% of homes have broadband.”

In fact, a 2022 survey from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a part of the Department of Commerce, found that 12% of households in the US didn’t have internet in 2023. The same year, the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey put the figure at 7.8%. Add another grain of salt. 

But that’s not to say the ACS data isn’t worth taking seriously. The Census Bureau interviewed nearly 2 million households in 2023 -- far larger than any other dataset on internet use in the US -- and it’s been asking the same questions on the topic for nearly a decade. The numbers themselves might be inflated, but that doesn’t mean the trends are. 

Will the loss of the ACP exacerbate the digital divide?

The open question in broadband circles is how much we’ll backslide now that the ACP has expired. 

Thirteen percent of ACP subscribers, or roughly 3 million households, said that they would cancel their internet without the subsidy, according to a Benton Institute survey conducted as the ACP expired. Spectrum reported 154,000 lost customers in the second quarter, noting that it was "largely driven" by the end of the ACP.

Many of the experts I spoke with predicted that we’d see a regression in next year’s numbers. 

“Frankly, the need for broadband isn’t going down, it will only increase,” Thayer said. “In the short term, carriers will likely keep costs low, but we are going to need to address affordability to continue this upward trend. If we don’t, it will be rural areas that will ultimately feel the adverse effects.”