April 2013 Map of the Month: Broadband Service Levels and Utah Association of Governments

Pete CodellaBroadband

The Utah Broadband Project is working together with Utah Associations of Governments (AOGs) to address broadband planning issues on a regional level. Beginning in Spring 2013, the Project will convene planning councils on a regional basis to carry out this initiative. In light of this initiative, the Mapping Team ran an analysis on broadband service availability in each AOG.

The analysis uses broadband advertised speed ‘use cases’, each designed by the Project to represent classes of internet speeds needed to perform desired functionality. The use cases describe speeds needed to utilize the Internet at three increasing levels of use: basic broadband use, home office or home entertainment center use, and high capacity usage. The case levels take into account download and upload speeds needed to browse the web, check email, upload and download pictures, stream videos, exchange large volumes of information, etc.

The pie charts present the highest level use case, by percentage of housing units served, for each AOG region. For example, for almost half of the households in Six County AOG, Basic Consumer Broadband is the fastest internet service available. Six County and Southeast Utah AOGs have the largest percentage of people who can only subscribe to Basic Consumer Broadband and likely is indicative of the increased challenges of providing broadband service to rural areas.