Analysis in 38 US cities: AT&T, Verizon, and others offer lower-income and least-white areas slow internet for the same price as faster service in other regions
then signed up Chloe Albanesius / PCMag : ISPs Found Charging the Same for Internet Plans With Big Speed Disparities Nathan Yau / FlowingData : Slow internet for the same price as fast internet Kwasi Gyamfi Asiedu / Protocol : Report finds ISPs offer communities of color slower, pricier internet Sisi Jiang / Kotaku : You Could Be Paying The Same Prices As Your Neighbor For Slower Internet Associated Press : Poor, less white U.S. neighborhoods get worst internet deals Tweets: Michael Schnuerle / @michaelmobility : Phenomenal journalism, research, and story showing real inequity and structural racism. And they bring the analysis and raw data too so you can verify their work. https://twitter.com/... Craig Newmark / @craignewmark : .@themarkup gathered 800k+ internet offers and found four major providers disproportionately offered lower-income and least-White neighborhoods slow service—while other parts of town paid the same for high speeds. https://themarkup.org/... Aaron Sankin / @asankin : If you want to dig into our methodology showing the full results and how we did it, check it out here (WARNING: Math) https://themarkup.org/... Steven Renderos / @stevenrenderos : This incredible study reaffirms something my lived experience has taught me. It's more expensive to be poor than to be rich. So of course poor people pay more for Internet at slower speeds. https://twitter.com/... @eff : A new study shows systemic discrimination against low-income broadband users. Congress tasked the FCC to ban this practice, but the FCC remains understaffed and unable to act. https://themarkup.org/... Walter Thompson / @yourprotagonist : I did not expect to find “broadband redlining” on my bingo card today https://twitter.com/... @beardedstoner : “History doesn't matter,” but discriminatory housing guidelines from 100 years ago are a modern business model. https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The Markup's 38-city analysis is the sharpest version yet of a pattern first documented years ago, when a study found millions of US customers paying the same price for very slow broadband as neighbors on much faster tiers. What is new here is the geographic granularity: the slow-for-same-price deals map onto lower-income and least-white census tracts, turning a consumer complaint into a discrimination finding.
The timing matters because federal broadband money is in play. Critics have already warned that a rural-first strategy risks leaving the 13.6M urban households without broadband behind, and AT&T, Charter, Comcast, and Verizon are simultaneously lobbying to weaken the $42.5B access program and block new rules on poor customers' bills.
First-order effects
- Customers in the analyzed tracts in cities served by AT&T, Verizon, and other ISPs are paying identical prices for materially slower service than residents of whiter, higher-income areas of the same city.
- The named carriers face immediate reputational and regulatory exposure, since the analysis gives the FCC and state utility regulators tract-level evidence that pricing does not track delivered speeds.
Second-order effects
- The finding strengthens the case for strings attached to the $42.5B buildout money the carriers are lobbying to keep rule-free, putting their affordability-pledge record — including pandemic-era low-income offers users said were hard to sign up for — back under scrutiny.
- It compounds the pressure from the separate investigation into how telecom giants allegedly abused the FCC's $14B Affordable Connectivity Program through price hikes and speed cuts, giving lawmakers a two-front argument for tightening subsidy conditions.
Third-order effects
- If the same-price-slower-speed pattern holds across programs, federal broadband subsidies may shift from funding raw coverage toward enforcing per-dollar speed parity by neighborhood, directly constraining how carriers tier service in low-income and minority tracts.
- The urban-rural split in the coverage suggests broadband policy could bifurcate into separately designed rural and urban programs rather than one carrier-friendly national framework.
The trend: US broadband is moving from a coverage problem to an equity-pricing problem, where neighborhood-level speed disparities collide with federally subsidized buildout rules.