Adoption Resources
NTIA is working to increase broadband Internet adoption in the United States, which will help more Americans compete in the 21st century economy. NTIA's initiatives include an annual nationwide survey and report on broadband use, which can inform efforts to close the digital divide, and DigitalLiteracy.gov, a website with resources for teaching and learning computer and online skills.
The NTIA Broadband Adoption Toolkit (23MB pdf) shares best practices across the U.S.
Broadband adoption research
NTIA's Recovery Act broadband programs
The Connecting America’s Communities map illustrates where BTOP projects are located across the country.
Related content
Exploring the Digital Nation: America’s Emerging Online Experience
This report, based on data from the Census Bureau’s July 2011 Current Population Survey (“CPS”) Computer and Internet Use Supplement, updates and substantially expands on the previous study in this series, Exploring the Digital Nation: Computer and Internet Use at Home, issued in 2011. For the first time in eight years, this study goes beyond new findings on computer and Internet adoption in the United States to also present data on Americans’ online activities – what Americans do once they connect to the Internet.
Breaking Down the Urban-Rural Broadband Divide
While broadband availability has expanded for all parts of the United States, NTIA data has consistently shown that urban areas have greater access to broadband at faster speeds than rural areas. In a new report released today, NTIA and the Commerce Department’s Economics and Statistics Administration (ESA) delve deeper into the differences between broadband availability in rural and urban areas.
This latest report is part of a series from NTIA that examines broadband availability data in greater detail. One key finding of the new report suggests that, in many cases, the closer a community lies to a central city, the more likely it is to have access to broadband at higher speeds. This is significant because some lower-density communities are located closer to the central city of a metropolitan area and have more access to faster broadband speeds than higher- density communities that are more distant from a central city.
Broadband Availability Beyond the Rural/Urban Divide
While it is commonly understood that broadband is less available in rural communities and more available in urban communities, a simple two-way, rural-urban comparison masks the fact that there is considerable variation in availability within these two types of communities. By assigning communities to one of five categories, it becomes clear that there is not a simple rural/urban divide. Rather, one group of rural Americans has even less broadband access than previously understood and two groups of urban Americans have more broadband than is typically identified.