Many rural communities need more than a fast download connection; they need more upload speed, study finds

Purdue University graph of internet connection speeds along a 10-step urban-rural continuum 

As the country gears for massive federal and state investment in broadband infrastructure, Americans need to understand that closing the rural-urban digital divide is no longer the "Yes, I have a connection" or "No, I got zip" conversation of the early 2000s, Roberto Gallardo, an associate professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University, writes for The Daily Yonder. Instead, it needs to be an in-depth look and planning to add what kind of broadband is lacking; often in rural places, internet upload speeds are critical, Gallardo writes.

"Before the pandemic, most internet users consumed or downloaded. However, increasingly due to e-learning, remote work, and running online micro businesses, users are producing or uploading more," Gallardo writes. "Increasingly the question is becoming: Who is using the internet at faster speeds? Are connections symmetrical—where download and upload speeds are similar? Or are most internet users driving down a six-lane paved road (faster download speeds) and driving back on a dirt road (slower upload speeds)?"

Gallardo reports on a recent study he led: "As the share of a [census] tract's population is more rural, the average download and upload speeds are slower." In purely urban tracts, the average download speed was 202 megabytes; in tracts where the share of rural population was at least 85.3%, it was 119 Mbps. The "same trend is seen with average upload speeds, where in the most urban tracts the average speed was 64 Mbps compared to 39 Mbps in the most rural tracts." Pointing to a bar graph in the study report, Gallardo notes "that average download and upload speeds seem to not change much until the share of rural population reaches close to one-third or 31.6%. On the other hand, the download/upload asymmetry does not change regardless of if the share of the population is urban or rural. Average download speeds were 3x faster for both the most urban and the most rural tracts."

Gallardo's team used "speed test results from the Speedtest by Ookla Global Fixed. Network Performance Maps and the latest American Community Survey 2017-2021 from the Census Bureau, averaged by the number of speed tests for 2021 to match the most recent release of ACS data." Speed tests were for fixed broadband networks, not cellular or mobile, and for tracts with at least 50 speed tests. The results included 83,107 tracts, "or 98% of all tracts available," he writes.