Texas Broadband Report Card 2026

Key Findings

Top 10 Texas Metros by Average Speed

Provider Market Share in Texas

The Rural Gap: Worst-Connected TX Counties

Rural West Texas and Big Bend counties consistently rank lowest in broadband availability. Residents in these areas rely primarily on satellite (Starlink, HughesNet) or fixed wireless.

What the Data Tells Us

The defining story of Texas broadband in 2026 is the gap between its thriving metros and its rural west and south. Austin-Round Rock leads the state at 412 Mbps average download with 78% fiber availability, while the worst-connected counties — Loving, Terrell, and Hudspeth — average just 12 to 18 Mbps with zero fiber and a single provider. That is more than a 20-to-1 speed gap inside a single state, and it tracks almost exactly with population density: the five fastest metros all sit on the I-35 corridor, while the slowest counties are sparsely populated areas where the cost to trench fiber has historically outrun the return.

Competition is the clearest predictor of speed. Metros averaging four or more providers per household (Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston) all clear 340 Mbps, while the rural counties at the bottom of the table have exactly one option — almost always satellite or fixed wireless. This is why fiber availability, not raw speed, is the metric that matters most for a household deciding where to live or which plan to buy: where fiber competition exists, prices fall and speeds rise together.

The $3.3 billion BEAD allocation — the largest of any state — is aimed squarely at this divide. Most of it is earmarked for the unserved and underserved counties in the bottom rows of our rural table, with construction ramping through 2026 to 2028. For now, rural Texans without a wired option should weigh low-earth-orbit satellite (Starlink) against fixed wireless, both of which have closed much of the latency gap that made older satellite service impractical. Use the address checker to confirm what is actually serviceable at a specific location before ordering — availability in these markets changes block by block as BEAD-funded builds come online.

Methodology

This report aggregates data from the FCC Broadband Data Collection (BDC) Q3 2025 filing, Ookla Speedtest Intelligence (Jan-Mar 2026), provider investor filings, and the NTIA BEAD allocation tables. Metro-level averages are population-weighted. Fiber access percentages represent addresses where at least one fiber provider reports availability in the FCC BDC. Rural is defined as counties with population density below 50 persons per square mile.