Contents
Where in the United States you can actually get a fast, symmetric, reliable connection — as opposed to where a coverage map claims you can.
Related: Broadband · status of UK broadband · local hosting
The finding that surprises people
Rural does not predict bad. North Dakota — one of the emptiest states in the country — has the best home internet in the United States, scoring 94.1 out of 100, with roughly 99.2% of homes reachable by high-speed service and almost no gap between town and countryside. It got there by building consistently everywhere rather than by having cities.
The states at the bottom are also rural, which is the point: rurality is not the cause. Policy and cooperative build-out are.
The bottom
| State | Position | Fiber availability | Average download |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska | Last in the nation | ~13% | ~105 Mbps |
| Wyoming | Second from last | ~22% | ~112 Mbps |
| Montana | Bottom five | — | ~115 Mbps |
| New Mexico | Bottom five | — | — |
| Idaho | Bottom five | — | — |
Alaska is the only state that ranks worst on every metric measured. Hawaii, Wyoming and Alaska all average below 160 Mbps.
Wyoming is at least moving: it posted the largest single-year gain in fiber availability in the country, up 13 percentage points.
South Dakota — the disputed case
Sources conflict and it is worth knowing why before quoting a number.
- Statewide fiber availability is reported at 19.6% of population, or 40.6% on a looser "fiber is an option" measure.
- Sioux Falls has roughly 50% fiber coverage, with about 72% of residents able to buy a gigabit plan.
- But the state's rural cooperatives — Venture Communications, James Valley — deliver genuine gigabit service, and an independent assessment found South Dakota's rural networks above average for rural deployments.
Both stories are true. The cooperative-served areas are good; the statewide average is dragged down by everything else. Which side of that line a specific address falls on is not knowable from a state-level number — check the address.
The cost gap explains the pattern: deploying fiber runs about $3,571 per resident in the rural areas served by South Dakota Telecommunications Association members, against roughly $26 per resident in Sioux Falls. A 137-fold difference is why co-ops and public money, rather than incumbents, built whatever rural fiber exists.
How to read any of this
State-level broadband rankings are close to useless for choosing a place to live. Availability is decided street by street, the FCC's own maps have historically overstated coverage, and "high-speed" thresholds differ between sources. Every figure here is a state aggregate.
Check the actual address, against more than one provider's own serviceability tool, before treating connectivity as solved.
Sources: Compare Internet — best and worst states for home internet 2026 · Reviews.org — fiber availability, rural vs urban · BroadbandNow — best and worst states for broadband · MuniNetworks — South Dakota's rural networks above average