Rhode Island Broadband Data

What the FCC Data Shows for Rhode Island

Rhode Island has 9 distinct broadband providers on file with the FCC and 120,605 total deployment records across all technology types. The state's average maximum advertised download speed sits at 312.9 Mbps — well above the federal 100/20 Mbps broadband benchmark. That headline figure is the mean across every filing, so it weights provider-by-census-block records equally rather than weighting by population, which means rural filings pull the average as much as urban ones.

The technology mix in Rhode Island is led by cable, with fiber accounting for 13.3% of filings, cable 16.2%, and DSL 10.6%. Fiber share is the single best indicator of future-proofed infrastructure because fiber supports symmetric multi-gigabit speeds and scales without rewiring; cable share signals incumbent coverage in suburbs and cities; DSL share typically correlates with legacy copper footprints in smaller towns and rural pockets where no newer technology has arrived yet.

Verizon Communications Inc. files the most deployment records in Rhode Island at 28,823, with ViaSat, Inc. second at 25,181. The dominant technology line by filing count is Fixed Wireless Licensed, which alone accounts for 72,159 records. Remember that Form 477 counts provider filings, not homes actually connected, so a block with five providers shows up as five records — useful for measuring competition and coverage breadth, but not a direct proxy for subscriber counts or real-world speeds at any specific address.