Land grab: 2H 2025 defined by rapid expansion

The U.S. broadband landscape shifted dramatically in late 2025, driven by record-breaking fiber deployments and the rapid expansion of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation. Fixed wireless access (FWA) subscribers numbers also increased during the year, as wireless providers continued to expand their FWA reach. Under pressure from fiber, satellite, and FWA, cable providers accelerated their transition to high-split DOCSIS and  DOCSIS 4.0 in their existing footprint, which increases users’ bandwidth and delivers faster uplink speeds. 

Ookla Speedtest Intelligence® data found that the number of states that are able to deliver fixed broadband services (fiber, cable and DSL) to the minimum standard of broadband speeds (100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload) to 60% or more of Speedtest users in their state increased from 38 states and the District of Columbia in the first half of 2025 to 45 states and the District of Columbia in the second half of 2025. Plus, 13 states are now delivering the minimum  of 100/20 Mbps fixed broadband speeds to 70% or more of Speedtest users.

Speedtest data also indicates that satellite broadband speeds improved during the second half of the year, as well. In the second half of 2025, Starlink’s ability to deliver the FCC’s minimum standard for broadband speeds of 100/20 Mbps across the U.S. improved dramatically with 50% or more of Speedtest users in five states—Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, and Nevada—experiencing speeds of 100/20 Mbps while using Starlink’s low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite service. This was an increase from 1H 2025 when South Dakota with 37.13% was the state with the highest percentage of Starlink users that could get LEO broadband speeds of 100/20 Mbps. 

Closing the Gap: Digital Divide Shrinks Dramatically in 2H 2025

The U.S. saw a big improvement in the digital divide in the second half of 2025 with 43 states improving upon the gap in performance between their urban users and their rural users compared to the gap that existed in the first half of 2025. 

According to the Fiber Broadband Association, by year-end 2025 fiber had passed 84.6 million homes, accounting for more than 60% of U.S. households. This was an increase of 11.8 million over 2024 with the bulk of the deployments occurring in the final two quarters of the year.

By the end of 2025, AT&T, which is the largest U.S. fiber provider, had outfitted 32 million locations with fiber. In addition, Verizon ended 2025 with about 18 million fiber locations. Plus, the company’s acquisition of Frontier Communications, which closed in January 2026, will give it another 9.1 million fiber locations. 

New Mexico is particularly notable for the improvements it made during the second half of 2025. The state shrank its digital divide from a 28.8 percentage point gap between rural and urban users in the 1H of 2025 to a gap of just 23.6 percentage points in 2H 2025. 

There are several likely reasons for the improvements to the digital divide during the second half of 2025. As noted above, big ISPs like AT&T and Verizon increased their fiber footprint and some of those improvements included rural areas. Charter Communications, for example, in late 2025 reached a milestone in its Rural Construction Initiative by surpassing 1 million new rural locations with fiber.

Plus, the end of 2025 was a key milestone for the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF), a multi-billion dollar FCC initiative that was designed to bring high-speed broadband to underserved rural areas across the United States.

Grantees that were awarded RDOF funding in 2021 had to cover 60% of their assigned locations by the end of the 2025. In addition, RDOF grantees that were authorized later in 2022 and 2023 had to cover 40% of their assigned locations by year-end.  

Besides Charter Communications, other RDOF grantees include Frontier Communications (which was purchased by Verizon in early 2026), Brightspeed, which was formed from the acquisition of Lumen’s assets in 20 states, and the Rural Electric Cooperative Consortium (RECC), which is building fiber to more than 618,000 locations in 22 states. 

In addition, many customers likely are signing up for faster services plans or moving from DSL to fiber to secure faster broadband speeds. 

Connecticut, New Jersey lead state rankings

Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware and 10 other states are the top-ranking U.S. states in the second half of 2025 with at least 70% of Speedtest users experiencing 100/20 Mbps broadband speeds. This is more than double the number of states (five) that had 70% or more of Speedtest users experiencing 100/20 Mbps broadband speeds in the first half of 2025. 

Those three states have consistently been at the top of the state rankings. They benefit from having a smaller land mass with high population densities, making it more efficient and less costly for broadband providers to provide high-speed connectivity to customers in these states. 

In addition, 45 states and the District of Columbia are now delivering the minimum broadband speeds of 100/20 Mbps to 60% or more of their users. This is an increase from 38 states and the District of Columbia that met this criteria in the 1H of 2025. 

It’s worth noting that some of the increase in the percentage of Speedtest users that are able to get the FCC’s minimum standard for broadband is likely due to customers upgrading their broadband rate plans with their ISPs. Many ISPs offer tiered pricing that is based upon speeds. According to OpenVault’s Q4 2025 report on broadband usage 87% of subscribers are provisioned for a speed plan of at least 200 Mbps download speeds. In addition, the report said that the percentage of subscribers that are provisioned for plans slower than 100 Mbps has declined to just 10%.

For the complete list, download the full report.

Nebraska tops the charts for Starlink-powered broadband

Wired ISPs weren’t the only broadband providers that made big inroads in 2025. During the year, SpaceX conducted over 120 Falcon 9 missions to launch Starlink satellites. By the end of the year Starlink’s LEO constellation consisted of nearly 10,000 active satellites. This increased the density of satellites in the constellation which means that subscribers nearly always have multiple satellites overhead.  With more satellites overhead, users are likely to get stronger signals because each satellite can focus its energy into a smaller beam, which allows for more capacity per square mile of coverage.

The percentage of Speedtest users in every state that are now able to get the FCC’s minimum broadband speeds of 100/20 Mbps has increased significantly from the 1H of 2025 when we first started tracking this metric for Starlink. In 2H 2025 50% or more of Starlink users in five states—Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado and Nevada—experience speeds of 100/20 Mbps and in 17 states 40% or more of Starlink users experience 100/20 Mbps speeds. 

This is an improvement from the 1H of 2025 when only 37.13% of Speedtest users in the top-ranking state of South Dakota were able to experience the minimum broadband speeds. 

In 2H 2025 Nebraska topped the other 49 states and the District of Columbia with 58.3% of the state’s Starlink users receiving the minimum broadband speeds of 100/20 Mbps. This is an increase over the 1H of 2025 when 32.16% of Starlink users in Nebraska were able to get the FCC’s minimum required broadband speeds. 

Alaska is still the lowest ranking state in this ranking of Starlink speeds. However, it did see some improvement—in 2H 2025, 15.9% of Starlink users experienced the minimum broadband speeds of 100/20 Mbps compared to just 4.35% in the 1H of 2025.  As we noted in the 1H 2025 report, most Starlink satellites are launched into inclined orbits to cover the most populated parts of the globe. To cover Alaska, SpaceX has to launch polar orbit satellites and there are simply fewer satellites that pass over the poles as compared to the continental U.S., where the population density is greater. 

For the complete list, download the full report.

Rural Starlink users outperform urban in 29 states

Starlink has effectively reversed the traditional connectivity gap in 29 U.S. states, where a higher percentage of rural Starlink users are able to get the FCC’s minimum requirements for broadband service than urban Starlink users. Ookla’s analysis uses the U.S. Census Bureau’s urban-rural classifications to categorize user data.

Vermont has the largest gap between rural and urban Starlink users with 44.2% of rural Vermont subscribers experiencing the minimum broadband speeds of 100/20 Mbps compared to urban 26.7% of urban Vermont subscribers.

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