The Internet in the United States grew out of the ARPANET, a network sponsored by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense during the 1960s. The Internet in the United States of America in turn provided the foundation for the worldwide Internet of today.
Internet connections in the United States are largely provided by the private sector and are available in a variety of forms, using a variety of technologies, at a wide range of speeds and costs. In 2001, half of U.S. households had internet access. In September 2007, a majority of U.S. survey respondents reported having broadband internet at home. In 2019, the United States ranked 3rd in the world for the number of internet users (behind China and India), with 312.32 million users. , 96% of adults in America use the internet. The United States ranks #1 in the world with 7,000 Internet service providers (ISPs) according to the CIA. Internet bandwidth per Internet user was the 43rd highest in the world in 2016.
Internet top-level domain names specific to the U.S. include .us, .edu, .gov, .mil, .as (American Samoa), .gu (Guam), .mp (Northern Mariana Islands), .pr (Puerto Rico), and .vi (U.S. Virgin Islands). Many U.S.-based organizations and individuals also use generic top-level domains, such as .com, .net, and .org.
Overview
Access and speed
Access to the Internet can be divided into dial-up and broadband access. Around the start of the 21st century, most residential access was by dial-up, while access from businesses was usually by higher speed connections. In subsequent years dial-up declined in favor of broadband access. Both types of access generally use a modem, which converts digital data to analog for transmission over a particular analog network (ex. the telephone or cable networks).
Dial-up access is a connection to the Internet through a phone line, creating a semi-permanent link to the Internet. Operating on a single channel, it monopolizes the phone line and is the slowest method of accessing the Internet. Dial-up is often the only form of Internet access available in rural areas because it requires no infrastructure other than the already existing telephone network. Dial-up connections typically do not exceed a speed of 56 kbit/s, because they are primarily made via a 56k modem.
Broadband access includes a wide range of speeds and technologies, all of which provide much faster access to the Internet than dial-up. The term "broadband" once had a technical meaning, but today it is more often used as a marketing buzzword to simply mean "faster". Broadband connections are continuous or "always on" connections, without the need to dial and hangup, and do not monopolize phone lines. Common types of broadband access include DSL (digital subscriber lines), which uses a telephone line, cable Internet access, satellite Internet access, and mobile or wireless broadband, via cell phones or a mobile broadband modem, through a cellular or wireless network, and from a cell tower. In 2015, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defined broadband as any connection with a download speed of at least 25 Mbit/s and an upload speed of at least 3 Mbit/s, though the definition has used a slower speed in the past. In March 2024, the FCC increased the minimums to 100 Mbit/s downloads and 20 Mbit/s uploads for defining broadband.
The percentage of the U.S. population using the Internet grew steadily through 2007, and declined slightly in 2008 and 2009. Growth resumed in 2010, and reached its highest level so far (81.0%) in 2012, the latest year for which data is available. 81.0% is slightly above the 2012 figure of 73% for all developed countries. Based on these figures the U.S. ranked 12th out of 206 countries in 2000, fell to 31st out of 209 by 2010, and was back up slightly to 28th out of 211 in 2012. In 2012 the U.S. figure of 81.0% was similar to those of France (83.0%), Belgium (82.0%), Australia (82.3%), Austria (81.0%), Slovakia (80%), Kuwait (79.2%), and Japan (79.1%). The figures for the top ten countries in 2012 ranged from 91.0% for Finland to 96.9% for the Falkland Islands.
Internet usage in the United States varies widely from state to state. For example, in the U.S. overall in 2011, 77.9% of the population used the Internet. But in that same year (2011), there was a large gap in usage between the top three states - Washington (80.0%), New Hampshire (79.8%) and Minnesota (79.0%) - and the bottom three states - Mississippi (59.0%), New Mexico (60.4%) and Arkansas (61.4%).
According to an April 2018 article in Motherboard, "In every single state, a portion of the population doesn't have access to broadband, and some have no access to the internet at all."
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:center;" |+ Internet use in the United States 2000 to 2015 as a percentage of population |- ! ||colspan='2' | Internet users ||colspan='2' | Fixed broadbandsubscriptions ||colspan='2' | Wireless broadbandsubscriptions |- ! Year !! % ofpopulation !! Worldrank !! % ofpopulation !! Worldrank !! % of population !! OECD rankThe 34 OECD countries include Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States. |- | 2015 || 75% || || || || || |- | 2014 || 73% || || || || || |- | 2013 || 72% || || || || || |- | 2012 || 75% || || 28.0% || 24 of 193 || 89.8% || 6 of 34 |- | 2011 || 70% || || 27.4% || 25 of 194 || 77.1% || 7 of 34 |- | 2010 || 72% || || 26.7% || 27 of 205 || 61.1% || 8 of 34 |- | 2009 || 71% || || 25.5% || 26 of 201 || 46.9% || 7 of 30 |- | 2008 || 74% || || 24.8% || 23 of 197 |- | 2007 || 75% || || 23.2% || 20 of 190 |- | 2006 || 69% || 17 of 206 || 20.1% || 22 of 174 |- | 2005 || 68% || 15 of 206 || 17.2% || 18 of 174 |- | 2004 || 65% || 14 of 204 || 12.7% || 18 of 151 |- | 2003 || 62% || 12 of 202 || 9.5% || 17 of 131 |- | 2002 || 59% || 13 of 207 || 6.9% || 13 of 109 |- | 2001 || 49% || 12 of 207 || 4.5% || 9 of 81 |- | 2000 || 43% || 12 of 206 || 2.5% || 5 of 45
Fixed (wired) and wireless broadband penetration have grown steadily, reaching peaks of 28.0% and 89.8% respectively in 2012. These rates place the U.S. above the world average of 25.9% for fixed broadband in developed countries and well above the average of 62.8% for wireless broadband in OECD countries. Wireless broadband subscriptions in the U.S. are primarily mobile-cellular broadband. Because a single Internet subscription may be shared by many people and a single person may have more than one subscription, the penetration rate will not reflect the actual level of access to broadband Internet of the population and penetration rates larger than 100% are possible.
A 2013 Pew study on home broadband adoption found that 70% of consumers have a high-speed broadband connection. About a third of consumers reported a "wireless" high-speed connection, but the report authors suspect that many of these consumers have mistakenly reported wireless connections to a wired DSL or cable connection. Another Pew Research Center survey, results of which were published on February 27, 2014, revealed 68% of American adults connect to the Internet with mobile devices like smartphones or tablet computers. The report also put Internet usage by American adults as high as 87%, while young adults aged between 18 and 29 were at 97%.
In measurements made between April and June 2013 (Q2), the United States ranked 8th out of 55 countries with an average connection speed of 8.7 Mbit/s. This represents an increase from 14th out of 49 countries and 5.3 Mbit/s for January to March 2011 (Q1). The global average for Q2 2013 was 3.3 Mbit/s, up from 2.1 Mbit/s for Q1 2011. In Q2 2013 South Korea ranked first at 13.3 Mbit/s, followed by Japan at 12.0 Mbit/s, and Switzerland at 11.0 Mbit/s.
Ownership Unlike in countries such as China, Japan and New Zealand, internet infrastructure such as fiber optic cables, 4G LTE, 5G base stations, DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) and satellite networks in the United States are owned by private ISP's as opposed to the state, this in conjunction with high concentration of market share among four major players: AT&T (41.4%), Comcast (36.1%), Charter (33.4%) and Verizon (17.4%) as of 2021 allows for the creation of local monopolies whereby providers have little incentive to compete with each other or enter other providers' "territory" in order to fix prices and maintain market share.
Since ownership of underlying infrastructure is decentralised and privatised, the construction of internet infrastructure is also fragmented and driven by profit instead of public need. Given this, government attempts at funding roll out of infrastructure in rural and under-served areas where no financial incentive exists to for private companies to build any remains slow and costly, since the US government is forced to subsidise private ISP's to construct fibre optic cable networks and other key infrastructure.
As of 2022, a study by the Fibre Broadband Association estimated that only 43% of US households had access to fibre optic connections with "Tier 1" providers such as AT&T, Verizon, Lumen five others building 72% of fiber coverage in the United States. FCC data as of 2019 indicated that some 21.3 million Americans lacked access to fixed broadband with speeds of at 25 Mbit/s down and 3 Mbit/s up. Attempts by the US government to roll out or upgrade key internet infrastructure in any uniform or integrated way remain strongly influenced by corporate interests, lobbying at both the state and federal level and objections to what is perceived as government intervention in free market dynamics.
Competition
A lack of competition and consumer choice in the broadband provider market has been cited as the primary reason Internet costs can be high and speeds and access can be poor even in urban areas. In the DSL market, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 required incumbent local exchange carriers to lease lines to consumers to competitive local exchange carriers, but changes to FCC regulations in 2005 significantly weakened these requirements. In the cable broadband market, the 1996 law also allowed cable companies to consolidate, resulting in a small number of large companies, which agreed to give each one a monopoly in a certain geographic area.