Top 10 US States by FCC Broadband Coverage Record Volume

PlainBroadband ranks US states by the total number of FCC Form 477 coverage records, weighted by provider count and average maximum download speed. Sourced from the FCC's final Form 477 release.

Research period: 2026-05-17

Compiled by PlainBroadband Editorial, Broadband Coverage Editorial Team · May 17, 2026

Methodology

This ranking is built from the FCC's final Form 477 fixed-broadband-deployment release (June 2020 status) - the last snapshot published before the program was retired. Because the program has ended, these figures are a stable historical record rather than a live-refreshing feed; nothing here changes without a new upstream release from the FCC.

States with no data reported are left out of the ranking rather than shown as a false zero, since the FCC occasionally withheld a figure for confidentiality or data-quality reasons in the original release.

Every number on this page traces back to a specific FCC Form 477 record, so you can verify it yourself against the original source rather than taking our word for it. See the methodology page for the full data pipeline and dataset vintage.

The ranked top 10

Every row below reflects the FCC's final Form 477 release, a stable historical record.

#	State	FCC coverage records	Providers	Avg max download (Mbps)	Fiber share (%)
1	Texas	5,223,639	211	130.455	3.7
2	California	4,251,743	158	144.545	3.3
3	Illinois	2,876,875	143	140.979	3.1
4	Florida	2,509,013	68	182.365	4.5
5	Ohio	2,217,482	129	167.805	3.1
6	Pennsylvania	2,080,404	75	233.776	4.7
7	Missouri	1,998,337	123	111.511	3.5
8	Michigan	1,858,846	101	165.452	4
9	New York	1,804,926	71	234.941	7.5
10	Indiana	1,780,896	104	137.923	4.9

Source: Federal Communications Commission, Form 477 Fixed Broadband Deployment Data (June 2020 status). A stable historical snapshot; the source dataset is no longer updated. Federal Communications Commission, Form 477 Fixed Broadband Deployment Data (June 2020 status). A stable historical snapshot; the source dataset is no longer updated.

Findings

Top entity in the ranking

The top-ranked record in this dataset is Texas, with a value of 5,223,639 on the FCC coverage records column. The full top-10 set is rendered in the table above. Every value derives from the underlying states table; no number is hardcoded into this page. When the Federal Communications Commission publishes a revision and our ETL pipeline reingests, the ranking and the prose around it update on the next page load.

Distribution shape

The gap between the top-ranked record (5,223,639) and the 10th-ranked record (1,780,896) characterizes how concentrated the top of the distribution is. Where the top value is many multiples of the median value of the visible set, the population is highly concentrated, a small number of entities accumulate the bulk of the measured quantity. Where the top and bottom of the visible set are close together, the distribution is relatively flat across the top end. The full distribution beyond this top-10 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.

Aggregate context

Across the full states population, the aggregate query returns the following summary statistics. These anchors situate the top-10 ranking against the underlying population: how many records exist in total, what the sum of the ranking column is across all qualifying rows, and what the mean per-record value looks like. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied by the aggregate query (records with null or zero values on the ranking column are excluded). The aggregate row is computed by the same database engine that renders the ranking above, against the same snapshot.

Source provenance

The records in this ranking originate from Federal Communications Commission, specifically the Form 477 Fixed Broadband Deployment Data (June 2020 status). PlainBroadband ingested that release once and serves it as a stable historical record, since the FCC Form 477 fixed-deployment program has been retired and is no longer updated. The methodology page documents the source URL, the vintage date, and the transformation steps applied during ETL.

Why this ranking matters

Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and identify outliers, concentrations, and patterns that warrant deeper investigation. The detail pages linked from each entity in the table above give the full per-entity context: time-series history where available, related metrics from adjacent tables, and links onward to the underlying source records. The methodology page explains how an entity earns inclusion in the dataset and how the ranking column is computed at the source.

What this analysis cannot tell us

State-level coverage record counts aggregate all provider-by-location entries within each state from the FCC Form 477 fixed broadband deployment dataset. Coverage records are not equivalent to subscribers, installed connections, or households served; a single residence with three competing providers contributes three coverage records. States with high population and high competitive provider density (multiple cable, fiber, and fixed wireless operators) naturally accumulate more records than less competitive markets, even if subscriber penetration is similar. Fiber share, cable share, and DSL share percentages are calculated as each technology's share of total coverage records within the state, not as share of households actually served by each technology. Average maximum download speed is the mean of the highest reported download speeds across coverage records in the state, weighted by record count; it represents capability advertised by providers, not delivered throughput to subscribers. Cross-state comparisons should consider geographic terrain, population distribution, and the prevalence of competing terrestrial buildout in each market.

Top 10 US States by FCC Broadband Coverage Record Volume

Research question

Methodology