Findings show that while 22.3% of connections
in lower income brackets still do not have acceptable internet
performance for work and school during COVID-19, ISPs’ decisions to
expand available bandwidth for these communities is noticeably
improving internet speed.
Fastly, Inc. (NYSE: FSLY), a global edge cloud platform, today
announced a February to April 2020 analysis of internet performance
within median income brackets in the U.S.1 The first in a series of
data analyses on the digital divide — the unequal distribution of
internet access across socioeconomic and geographic lines — these
findings uncover a clear stratification of download speeds,
indicating households with lower incomes experienced lower download
speeds compared to households with higher incomes. In the weeks
since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more people
around the world are relying on the web for work and education from
home, bringing the internet's inequities into sharper focus. A
beacon of hope lies in recent internet service provider (ISP)
decisions to upgrade internet speeds for lower income communities,
which analysis shows has led to noticeable improvements in internet
performance. Notably, Fastly’s data only represents those who have
some sort of residential internet connection, and does not include
a group at the very heart of the digital divide issue — those
without internet at all.
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Median download speed by average income
per ZIP Code in the U.S. (Graphic: Business Wire)
“We hypothesized that internet performance would vary by income,
but we were surprised to see such a stark stratification,” said
Fastly’s Chief Architect and Founder, Artur Bergman. “Because of
Fastly’s visibility into telecommunications and ISP activity, as
well as end user experience, we can connect threads that help to
define the tangibility of the digital divide for many communities
in the U.S. This becomes especially insightful as more and more
people transition to a more web-reliant world in light of COVID-19.
We observed relief for those segments of the population arise as a
result of decisions from ISPs like Comcast and Cox Communications.
Both implemented upgraded internet speeds in mid-March, which led
to recognizable improvements in download speed for lower-income
communities.”
As Web-Reliance Increases, Low Income Communities Could
Struggle With Connectivity
To understand the impact of the digital divide on low-income
families during the COVID-19 pandemic, Fastly compared the median
download speed between February 26 and April 21 for five brackets
of annual average income. Download speed is a measure of the
bandwidth that a user’s connection to our server achieves, which is
typically lower than the connection speed users signed up for with
their internet providers. The analysis shows ZIP Codes with median
incomes in the highest brackets are seeing the highest download
speeds, compared to ZIP Codes with the lowest median incomes, which
are seeing the lowest download speeds. This reflects that, among
other inequities, people in higher income neighborhoods have both
access to higher bandwidth connectivity and the means to use
it.
While an increase in download speed is seen within this date
range in users of all income groups, users in the lowest income
group saw the largest increase. This bracket had its median
download speed increase from 13.7 Mbps to 17 Mbps, a 25 percent
increase in download speed over a period of two months. Fastly
analysis also shows that on February 26, 26.3 percent of the
connections in the lower income bracket did not meet the minimum
download speed recommended by the FCC for both telecommuting and
online learning (five Megabits per second). However, from mid-March
to mid-April, Fastly observed the biggest improvement in number of
users without the minimum required download speeds in that same
bracket, dropping from 26.3 percent to 22.3 percent.
ISPs Are Making a Difference
On March 14, Comcast announced it would increase the speed of
its Internet Essentials service (a package that is offered to all
qualified low-income households for less than $10 a month) from 15
Mbps to 25 Mbps. Prior to the announcement, the median user in the
lowest income bracket saw download speeds at 27.2 percent lower
than the median user in the highest income bracket.
Post-announcement, the download speed gap between a median user in
the lowest compared to the highest income bracket reduced from 27.2
percent to 13 percent.
Also on March 14, Cox Communications announced a similar
decision, upgrading its residential internet packages to 50 Mbps
for 60 days. Prior to the announcement, the median user in the
lowest income bracket saw download speeds at 13.9 percent lower
than the median user in the highest income bracket.
Post-announcement, the download speed gap between a median user in
the lowest compared to the highest income bracket reduced from 13.9
percent to 1.8 percent.
Likely as a result of these ISP decisions, Fastly observed the
median download speed of all connections in the U.S. has increased
from 17.9 Mbps on February 26, to 19 Mbps on April 21, a 6 percent
increase over a period of two months.
Check out the Fastly blog that explores an in-depth view of this
data and other findings, and stay tuned for more analysis over the
coming weeks.
Methodology and Sources
To cross-analyze income data to observed internet speed data,
Fastly used public data from the IRS that allowed it to find the
average Adjusted Gross Income per return filed with the IRS per ZIP
Code for 2017. Fastly then classified ZIP codes into five
categories based on the following thresholds: lowest = less than
$30,000; low = $30,000-$49,999; medium = $50,000- $99,999; high =
$100,000-$199,999; highest = $200,000 or more.
To calculate download speeds, Fastly used the TCP delivery rate
(from tcp_info) measured at its servers, and filtered it as
follows. Connections from large organizations that were clearly not
residential connections were discarded. Only large connections
(more than 100KB transferred) were considered, as well as the top
and bottom five percentiles of delivery rate samples to discard
outliers coming from estimation errors, night time usage, and from
any non-residential connections left in the dataset. Fastly
classified the resulting connections into the five income groups
based on the ZIP code they originated from.
The speeds shown are aggregated across TCP connections (user
connections) to Fastly servers. This means the download speeds
shown represent what each user is seeing, which could be different
than the bandwidth of an internet connection to a house. As a
simple example, a single user over a 5Mbps internet connection and
two users simultaneously using the internet over a shared 10Mbps
connection might all be recorded as seeing a 5Mbps download speed.
Fastly’s analysis of the methodology used is that the bandwidth
numbers in reality might be higher than what is reported. In other
words, Fastly erred on the side of caution in practice being better
than what is seen in these numbers.
About Fastly
Fastly helps people stay better connected with the things they
love. Fastly’s edge cloud platform enables customers to create
great digital experiences quickly, securely, and reliably by
processing, serving, and securing our customers’ applications as
close to their end-users as possible — at the edge of the internet.
The platform is designed to take advantage of the modern internet,
to be programmable, and to support agile software development.
Fastly’s customers use our edge cloud platform to ensure
concertgoers can buy tickets to the live events they love,
travelers can book flights seamlessly and embark on their next
great adventure, and sports fans can stream events in real time,
across devices. They include many of the world’s most prominent
companies, including Alaska Airlines, The New York Times, and
Ticketmaster.
1 Analysis cited Internal Revenue Service’s 2017 return data by
ZIP Code. See Methodology section at the end of the release for
more details.
View source
version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200429005242/en/
Media Contact Elaine Greenberg press@fastly.com
Investor Contact Maria Lukens ir@fastly.com
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