Broadband connections in households are an indicator of people’s access to information and services. Disparities in broadband access are partly explained by urban-rural divides within countries, particularly in countries with lower per capita incomes. Urban-rural divides in access can occur for a variety of reasons including fixed broadband networks not extending into some rural areas (lack of availability), lower uptake in rural areas, which may be associated with broadband prices being higher in harder-to-serve areas, incomes being lower, etc., and divides in terms of broadband quality (speed, latency, reliability and so on. See page 3.7 for more information).
Information from regulators shows that rural households, in many OECD countries, are less likely to be covered by, and thus have the option to purchase, fixed broadband with a contracted speed of 30 Mbps or more. Such a speed is sufficient to support relatively demanding, but increasingly commonplace, consumer applications such as streaming high-definition video. In almost half of the countries presented, fewer than 50% of rural households are located in areas with such connections available. Country size, topology and population spread are important factors in this regard. In Luxembourg and the Netherlands, almost all households, both urban and rural, are covered by broadband of 30 Mbps or more. Speeds of 1 Gbps are also common in both urban and rural areas in Japan and Korea. However, rural availability is much lower in countries such as Finland and Sweden, which have vast, sparsely populated, mountainous regions. France stands out, with only 52% of all households being covered in 2017.
Household ICT usage surveys provide a different perspective through statistics on connections purchased by households. However, these data also include broadband subscriptions with contracted speeds below 30 Mbps (and as slow as 256 Kbps). Results show that urban and rural households have roughly equal uptake of such connections in many OECD countries. However, the disparity remains wide in some other countries: twice as many urban households than rural households were connected to broadband in Brazil, and urban led rural by over 20 percentage points in Greece and Portugal in 2018. These and other countries have seen marked increases in both urban and rural broadband coverage since 2010.
Taken together, these statistics indicate that households’ demand for connectivity appears roughly equal in both urban and rural areas in OECD countries. However, rural areas are often served by slower connections than urban areas, which may limit the ways in which rural households and businesses can benefit from Internet access.
A large majority of businesses today make use of ICTs. In 2018, on average 92% of enterprises in OECD countries had a broadband subscription. However, the share with contracted speeds of 30 Mbps or more is often much lower. For example, less than half of EU firms with broadband have speeds of 30 Mbps or more, and only 40% of EU small businesses have such speeds. Nevertheless, the share of businesses with subscriptions of 30 Mbps or more has at least doubled since 2011 in all countries shown.
