FFB Week 34: Civil Engineers Give U.S. Broadband a C+

Civil Engineers Give U.S. Broadband a C+

The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the nation’s oldest civil engineering organization, has issued its first-ever assessment of broadband as a part of its “2025 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure,” rating it a C+ and roughly on par with the nation’s overall infrastructure GPA of a C.

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“Since 1988, ASCE has been publishing a report card, providing an assessment of conditions and needs, evaluating 18 categories [of infrastructure] based on eight criteria,” said Edward Barrett, President, Broadband Business Unit, HR Green, who was an advisor to the 2025 Report Card effort. “The committee evaluates relevant data reports for government agencies, private sector, nonprofits, and other organizations and solicits both data and feedback from industry experts to gain a wide view of the nation’s infrastructure.”

ASCE publishes its Report Card every four years. Its grading criteria includes capacity, condition, operation and maintenance, condition, public safety, funding, resilience, future need, and innovation. The country’s overall C grade is an improvement since the last one was issued, due in part to $1.2 trillion in investments over five years.

“It was very hard to create a national [infrastructure] grade,” said Barrett. “There are states where some state broadband directors would literally say, ‘We’re probably a D-.’ We have a lot of rural land; it’s woefully underserved. More urban areas have a lot of fiber; they may have some B+, maybe A-minuses. The aggregate C+ grade was, we think, a good rating for a first-time category.”

One of the challenges in creating the grade was the lack of public information detailing the state and type of broadband infrastructure around the country, unlike other civil engineering data available for things like bridges and roads, which are regularly inspected and publicly maintained. Broadband infrastructure is privately owned and with the scope and condition considered to be proprietary information that could be used by competitors.

Areas for improvement go beyond simply connecting the unconnected. “Resilience is pretty critical for the built environment,” said Barrett. “Across the U.S., disasters take place and wreak havoc on communities every day. In 2024, a total of 27 extreme weather events caused 568 deaths and over $182 billion in damages, including critical infrastructure that was destroyed. We have to do more to integrate resilience to protect against the impact of these extreme weather events.”

Broadband infrastructure improvements rely on both the public and private sectors to address needs and advance solutions, Barrett said, with expectations of the grade going up by the time the next Report Card is issued.

“Despite the C grade, there was a sense the nation is getting it, is investing, and a real sense of optimism if we could maintain [investment], there is some opportunity for these grades to continue to go up,” said Barrett.