Study shows how millions of customers in the US with very slow broadband speeds are paying the same price as those with much faster speeds
Most Americans pay roughly the same price for their internet connection, even if their service is painfully slow. — Despite the ample hype …
Context & Ripple Effects
This study adds the pricing dimension to an availability problem already on record: the FCC had counted 34M Americans without fixed broadband at benchmark speeds, and critics flagged that the FCC's National Broadband Map overstates available ISPs and omits pricing data entirely. The new finding reframes the gap — for millions stuck on slow connections, the market isn't failing to charge them less, it's charging them the same as fast-tier customers.
First-order effects
- Households on degraded-speed plans are overpaying relative to delivered service, while carriers capture flat-rate revenue across speed tiers with no discount for the slow end.
Second-order effects
- The Markup's later analysis in 38 cities found AT&T, Verizon, and others offering slower service at the same price in lower-income and least-white areas — evidence the flat-price pattern tracks geography and demographics, not just legacy infrastructure cost.
Third-order effects
- If flat pricing persists alongside thin carrier choice — the 22K-bill analysis found far higher average costs than Europe — regulators face pressure to require speed-and-price disclosure per address, since the current map gives them neither; the study ranking the US among the most expensive developed markets for wireless broadband suggests the same structure extends beyond fixed lines.
The trend: US broadband is consolidating around flat-rate pricing that decouples what customers pay from what they receive, with data gaps in FCC mapping making the disparity hard to police.