Signs of digital distress – Mapping broadband availability and subscription in American neighborhoods – “The internet is now a fundamental component of the American economy, creating new ways to educate, employ, bring services to, and entertain every person. Broadband, especially wireline broadband in American homes, is the essential infrastructure for unlocking the internet’s economic benefits. However, broadband infrastructure is far from ubiquitous, both in terms of where it operates and who subscribes to it, and those deficits are not shared evenly across the country. As such, policymakers must understand how the national digital divide varies depending on the place…By far, the largest broadband deployment gap exists in rural communities, where more than one in four residents (12.7 million people) lacked 25 Mbps broadband service in 2015. While rural communities are home to just 15 percent of the nation’s total population, they accounted for 57 percent of the nation’s residents in neighborhoods where broadband has yet to be deployed—a ratio that remains roughly the same at lower speed thresholds…”