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Residential Broadband Availability: Evidence from Kentucky and North Carolina

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2016

Mitch Renkow
Mitch Renkow*
Affiliation:
The Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina
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Abstract

I analyze the determinants of county-level broadband availability to gauge the extent to which the rural-urban broadband gap has narrowed and the factors that underlie that narrowing. Using data that have been collected by organizations tracking and promoting broadband in Kentucky and North Carolina, I find that in both states the rural-urban availability gap has indeed narrowed substantially, although there appears to be a limit on the extent to which broadband service will extend into the least densely populated counties. Among rural counties, availability rates increase systematically with the size of the county's urbanized population.

Keywords

broadband availabilitydigital dividerural development
Type
Rural Development and Broadband Use
Information
Agricultural and Resource Economics Review , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , August 2011 , pp. 145 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association 

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