Service providers in rural areas are seeing more broadband growth and less access line loss than carriers who operate in largely urban markets – on a percentage basis. This is largely because rural markets have lagged in both getting and adopting telecom services, so there remains more room for growth in rural markets.
Carriers that cater to urban markets are still leading in terms of raw numbers. The observations come from a new report from Pivot Media called “Rural vs. Urban: Examining Residential Broadband and Access Line Trends.”
With the broadband stimulus portion of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 as a backdrop, this new report offers insight into broadband growth and access line loss trends among leading rural and urban telecom carriers.
“The data within this report allows readers to put rural broadband growth and access line loss trends into context with more reported urban service provider trends. This analysis may prove helpful as the broadband stimulus program begins in earnest,” says Bernie Arnason, managing partner of Pivot Media.
Among key findings, the report reveals that rural service providers enjoyed slightly better sequential broadband growth in 2008 than urban providers. While growth in broadband slowed dramatically in the second quarter of 2008 for both rural and urban providers, rural providers enjoyed roughly a two-to-one sequential rate of growth over their urban counterparts in the period.
The full report is available for download here.
