NY Fed report: Most of Puerto Rico unserved by high-speed internet
Urban areas are served better than rural regions, and speeds often fall short of reported rates, according to the report.
The majority of Puerto Rico is unserved by high-speed internet, and internet speeds reported by internet service providers are often higher than the speeds experienced by users, according to a new report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Areas that are considered served in Puerto Rico appear to be closer to urban areas, while rural areas are largely underserved, the Fed reported.
“Served” refers to download speeds of 100 megabits per second (Mbps) or more, upload speeds above 25 Mbps and latency greater than 100 milliseconds (ms). (Latency is the amount of time it takes for a message to travel across a computer network. It’s also known as ping rate during speed tests.)
“Unserved” describes download speeds of less than 25 Mbps, upload speeds of less than 3 Mbps, and latency of less than 100 ms. “Underserved” specifies download speeds between 25 Mbps and 100 Mbps, upload speeds between 3 Mbps and 25 Mbps, and latency greater than 100 ms.
In terms of internet service providers (ISPs) offering speeds of at least 100/20 Mbps, Puerto Rico has internet coverage for almost all the eastern half of the island, based on the quantity of areas having three or more providers offering high-speed internet, mainly San Juan and surrounding areas. The western half of the island is more limited, with more areas having only one or two providers, the Fed reported, citing Federal Communications Commission data.
According to the report, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico’s neighbors, have no areas with three or more ISPs offering high-speed internet. Most of the USVI is underserved, with most experiencing internet speeds of below 100/20 Mbps.
As in Puerto Rico, in the USVI there is a large gap between what the ISPs are reporting to the FCC and the speeds communities are experiencing, the Fed said.
The report, “Digital Equity in the U.S. Northeast, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands,” mapped broadband cost, speed and availability for those areas between 2020 and 2023.
The Fed also found that the rural, lower-income and tribal communities in the areas studied are most affected by a lack of broadband access, with tribal lands and rural communities having the slowest download and upload speeds.
The lowest-cost broadband available can be as high as 2% of median income in the rural areas the report covers, as well as parts of New York City, including the Bronx, Upper Manhattan, the Lower East Side, and Eastern Brooklyn. By comparison, researchers say households typically spend around 3% of their income on utilities.
“Broadband is sometimes so expensive, as a share of median income, that lower-income households may be facing trade-offs between broadband and other monthly utilities,” Ambika Nair, a community development research analyst at the New York Fed and an author of the report, said in a press release.
High-speed internet is important for access to services including telehealth, online banking, benefits enrollment and homework. An estimated 12% of Americans did not have high-speed access in 2021, the Fed said. Legislation, including the 2021 Digital Equity Act, has focused on expanding broadband service to populations that lack it, including rural communities and aging populations.
The report was developed as part of the New York Fed’s Community Development efforts, which have three areas of focus: health, household financial well-being and climate risk.
