Iowa broadband availability gap narrows as 93.5% have access

New figures show the broadband availability gap in Iowa is shrinking, with 93.5 of residents having access to fixed broadband of 3 megabits per second  download or higher, compared with 92.5 percent last year.

Connect Iowa, a nonprofit subsidiary of Connected Nation, has been working since 2009 to ensure that Iowans have access to the benefits derived from increased broadband access, adoption, and use. Among the findings of the new research are:

-- 82.2 percent of Iowa households have access to broadband at advertised speeds of 6 Mbps download/1.5 Mbps upload. That means nearly 218,000 households are in areas that may be eligible for Universal Service Fund broadband deployment subsidies.

-- 80.5 percent of Iowa households can access broadband at speeds of at least 10 Mbps download/1.5 Mbps upload (excludes mobile and satellite services.

-- 96.1 percent of rural households in Iowa have access to broadband of at least 768 Kbps download/200 Kbps upload (excludes mobile and satellite services).

-- 3.3 percent of Iowa households have access to broadband speeds of at least 100 Mbps download/1.5 Mbps upload. In October 2011, only 3.2 percent of  Iowa households had access to these broadband speeds (excludes mobile and satellite services).

-- Broadband of at least 768 Kbps download/200 Kbps upload is available to 97.7 percent of Iowa households, up from 97.6 percent last October, leaving 28,000 Iowa households unable to connect to basic high-speed Internet (excludes mobile and satellite services).

-- 87.2 percent of Iowa households have the ability to choose broadband service from two or more non-mobile broadband providers (excludes mobile and satellite services).