Communications research
America's Most Competitive Broadband Markets: 189 Metros Ranked by Real Choice
Provider counts make most of urban America look crowded with broadband choice. Count only the providers a household could actually switch to, and the picture changes: two choices at most addresses, a third in a minority of them, and that third is usually fixed wireless.
Your market is not as crowded as the filings say. At the typical American address a household can switch to one other wireline provider, sometimes two, and where a third choice exists it is usually fixed wireless. This ranking scores all 189 metros by the share of addresses with three real options, then shows what happens to each when the speed bar rises or fixed wireless is set aside. Size does not decide it: New York ranks 120th, Corpus Christi first.
A provider count answers the wrong question. It counts companies present somewhere in a metro, not options available at a doorstep. We asked a narrower one of all 93 million serviceable locations the FCC tracks: how many providers report cable, fiber or licensed fixed wireless at 100 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up at this exact address? Two is a duopoly. Three is the smallest number that leaves a household somewhere to go after rejecting one. Every ranking below is built on the share of a metro's addresses that reach three.
The ten most competitive metros
Ranked by the share of locations with three or more credible providers
| # | Metro | Locations (k) | Providers per location | 3+ | 4+ | Weak tracts | Third is FWA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Corpus Christi, TX | 152 | 81.6% | 57.5% | 3.0% | 45% | |
| 2 | Lincoln, NE | 114 | 79.1% | 56.0% | 8.0% | 74% | |
| 3 | Amarillo, TX | 107 | 77.4% | 49.2% | 5.5% | 24% | |
| 4 | Gulfport-Biloxi, MS | 173 | 77.1% | 38.1% | 3.6% | 60% | |
| 5 | San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA | 1,148 | 68.2% | 39.5% | 10.7% | 61% | |
| 6 | Killeen-Temple, TX | 170 | 67.9% | 43.1% | 13.0% | 50% | |
| 7 | Huntsville, AL | 203 | 67.1% | 43.8% | 11.3% | 20% | |
| 8 | Ogden-Clearfield, UT | 214 | 66.1% | 41.3% | 13.2% | 28% | |
| 9 | Kansas City, MO-KS | 775 | 64.7% | 37.4% | 16.0% | 30% | |
| 10 | Salt Lake City, UT | 345 | 64.3% | 34.9% | 11.7% | 40% |
- Providers per location:
- None
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four or more
Cite this table: G2M Insights, "America's Most Competitive Broadband Markets: 189 Metros Ranked by Real Choice," G2M Communications Research, edition 2025-12-31-v7, g2m.ai/research/communications/most-competitive-broadband-markets.
The top four are mid-sized metros in Texas, Nebraska and Mississippi where more than half of all locations can choose among four or more credible providers. San Francisco is the only metro over a million locations in the top ten, and the only one in the top twenty; Houston is eighteenth.
"Weak tracts" are census tracts where fewer than a quarter of locations have three credible providers. The measure guards against a metro whose competitive core masks a weakly served periphery. In Corpus Christi, Gulfport and Amarillo, 3 to 6 percent of locations are in weak tracts. Ranked by this breadth measure instead of by share, the top ten is nearly unchanged.
Twenty-nine of the 189 metros clear 50 percent. The median metro is at 35 percent.
See all 189 metros ranked Searchable by metro and state, under both thresholds used here.
Count the providers a household can switch to at its own address, not the filers in the metro. Under that count the median metro gives a third choice to 35 percent of addresses, and your competitive position is set by whether your markets sit above or below that line.
Most third choices are fixed wireless
What happens to the ranking when only cable and fiber count
The single most important result in this ranking comes from one change to the definition. Remove licensed fixed wireless, so that only cable and fiber count, and the national share of locations with three credible providers falls from 38 percent to 10.5 percent.
- Corpus Christi, TX 82% 45%
- Lincoln, NE 79% 21%
- Amarillo, TX 77% 59%
- Gulfport-Biloxi, MS 77% 31%
- San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA 68% 27%
- Killeen-Temple, TX 68% 34%
- Huntsville, AL 67% 54%
- Ogden-Clearfield, UT 66% 48%
- Kansas City, MO-KS 65% 45%
- Salt Lake City, UT 64% 38%
- Waco, TX 62% 39%
- San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX 60% 20%
- New Haven-Milford, CT 60% 43%
- Clarksville, TN-KY 59% 48%
- Lubbock, TX 59% 36%
- Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA 58% 34%
- Raleigh-Cary, NC 56% 38%
- Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX 55% 23%
- Scranton--Wilkes-Barre, PA 54% 27%
- Oklahoma City, OK 54% 8%
- Cable, fiber and licensed fixed wireless
- Cable and fiber only
Cite this chart: G2M Insights, "America's Most Competitive Broadband Markets: 189 Metros Ranked by Real Choice," G2M Communications Research, edition 2025-12-31-v7, g2m.ai/research/communications/most-competitive-broadband-markets.
At 72 percent of the metro locations with a third credible choice, that choice is a fixed-wireless service. The wireline market is a duopoly in nearly every metro; what varies is whether fixed wireless is present on top of it.
That dependence is not uniform, even at the top of the table. In Lincoln, 74 percent of the locations with three choices would drop to two without fixed wireless. In Huntsville, 20 percent would. Both metros post a 3+ share near 67 to 79 percent. Same headline number, different market.
For operators assessing fixed-wireless pressure in their own footprints, this column locates it. Among the thirty most competitive metros, the share of third choices carried by fixed wireless runs from 19 percent in Clarksville to 91 percent in Fort Wayne. Oklahoma City is at 86 percent.
If your metros sit near the top of this table, the rival that put them there is a mobile carrier's fixed wireless, not another wireline network. Read the third-is-fixed-wireless column before deciding which competitor your retention plan is built against.
Metros with a third wireline provider
The same ranking at a gigabit download threshold
The second table re-runs the ranking at a gigabit download threshold with the same 20 Mbps upload floor. Gigabit download keeps cable and fiber in the count and drops nearly all fixed wireless, without imposing an upload requirement that most cable plants cannot meet.
| # | Metro | Providers per location | 3+ | Weak tracts | Change from primary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Huntsville, AL | 53.9% | 24.3% | up 6 | |
| 2 | Clarksville, TN-KY | 48.1% | 31.9% | up 12 | |
| 3 | Ogden-Clearfield, UT | 46.7% | 36.4% | up 5 | |
| 4 | Corpus Christi, TX | 44.8% | 43.3% | down 3 | |
| 5 | Kansas City, MO-KS | 43.9% | 47.0% | up 4 | |
| 6 | New Haven-Milford, CT | 43.1% | 44.4% | up 7 | |
| 7 | Waco, TX | 39.2% | 48.7% | up 4 | |
| 8 | Killeen-Temple, TX | 36.3% | 50.7% | down 2 | |
| 9 | Salt Lake City, UT | 35.9% | 51.2% | up 1 | |
| 10 | Hartford-East Hartford-Middletown, CT | 35.3% | 50.4% | up 22 |
Cite this table: G2M Insights, "America's Most Competitive Broadband Markets: 189 Metros Ranked by Real Choice," G2M Communications Research, edition 2025-12-31-v7, g2m.ai/research/communications/most-competitive-broadband-markets.
Among the 189 ranked metros, only Huntsville has three or more qualifying providers at gigabit download speeds at more than half its locations. Nationally the figure is 10 percent. Six metros appear in both top tens: Corpus Christi, Huntsville, Ogden-Clearfield, Kansas City, Salt Lake City and Killeen-Temple. Those six have a third wireline provider at a substantial share of locations. Lincoln falls from second to thirty-fifth and Amarillo from third to eighty-seventh; their strength in the first table is wireless and sub-gigabit cable.
Even in these metros the third wireline provider is concentrated. In Huntsville, a quarter of locations are in weak tracts under this definition; in Kansas City, nearly half.
Your wireline duopoly holds until the speed bar moves. At a gigabit download only one metro in 189 has a third wireline provider at more than half its addresses; sell above 100/20 and the third choice disappears in almost every market.
Similar scores, different market structures
Five metros under every definition we tested
A single share hides how a metro arrived at it. Each column below changes one part of the definition: the second drops fixed wireless while holding the speed, and the last three raise the speed bar. Metros that look alike in the first column come apart across the rest.
| Metro | 100/20 | 100/20 wireline | 250/25 | 1000/20 | 1000/100 | Third is FWA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA | 68% | 27% | 50% | 28% | 12% | 61% |
| Huntsville, AL | 67% | 54% | 54% | 54% | 25% | 20% |
| Lincoln, NE | 79% | 21% | 46% | 20% | 1% | 74% |
| Corpus Christi, TX | 82% | 45% | 45% | 45% | 0% | 45% |
| Kansas City, MO-KS | 65% | 45% | 46% | 44% | 22% | 30% |
Cite this table: G2M Insights, "America's Most Competitive Broadband Markets: 189 Metros Ranked by Real Choice," G2M Communications Research, edition 2025-12-31-v7, g2m.ai/research/communications/most-competitive-broadband-markets.
Huntsville and San Francisco land within a point of each other on the primary ranking, 67 and 68 percent. Raise the bar to gigabit download and Huntsville holds at 54 percent while San Francisco falls to 28. Three of every five third choices in San Francisco are wireless; one in five in Huntsville. Huntsville leads the gigabit table.
Lincoln is the most fixed-wireless-dependent metro in the top ten: 79 percent of locations with three choices at 100/20, 21 percent on wires alone, 1 percent at 100 Mbps upload.
Corpus Christi, the national leader, is a hybrid. It keeps a 45 percent third-wire share at gigabit download but has almost no 100 Mbps upload competition. Its wireline challengers are cable and sub-100-upload fiber.
Kansas City shows the Huntsville pattern in a large metro: 44 percent at gigabit download, 22 percent at 100 Mbps upload, and the lowest wireless dependence of any metro over 500,000 locations.
Two metros with the same headline share can be different markets to compete in. Before pricing against competition in a metro, check whether its third choice survives a higher speed bar or vanishes with fixed wireless.
The biggest markets are not the most competitive
Where market size does and does not change the picture
Cite this chart: G2M Insights, "America's Most Competitive Broadband Markets: 189 Metros Ranked by Real Choice," G2M Communications Research, edition 2025-12-31-v7, g2m.ai/research/communications/most-competitive-broadband-markets.
Market size barely moves competition. The cloud is close to flat, tilting only slightly upwards, and every quadrant is populated: there are large competitive markets, large weak ones, small competitive ones and small weak ones. The country's two biggest markets sit in the middle of the pack. New York ranks 120th of 189 and Los Angeles 81st. The most competitive markets are mid-sized ones in Texas, Nebraska and Mississippi.
Where size does matter, it works against the reader's intuition. Metros above a million locations average 39 percent at 100/20, in line with the national figure, but only 8 percent once the bar is raised to a gigabit. That is the lowest of any size band. The biggest markets in the country are the least likely to offer a third wireline provider.
| Rank | Metro | Locations (k) | 2+ | 3+ | Weak tracts | Third is FWA | 3+ at 1000/20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA | 1,148 | 92% | 68.2% | 11% | 61% | 27.6% |
| 18 | Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX | 2,218 | 88% | 54.9% | 18% | 58% | 20.9% |
| 21 | Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL | 1,149 | 87% | 53.6% | 19% | 65% | 19.2% |
| 48 | Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 2,412 | 86% | 46.4% | 21% | 84% | 6.2% |
| 64 | Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI | 1,540 | 72% | 40.9% | 44% | 54% | 20.7% |
| 68 | St. Louis, MO-IL | 1,078 | 78% | 40.5% | 32% | 86% | 5.7% |
| 73 | Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL | 1,442 | 82% | 39.2% | 37% | 90% | 3.9% |
| 81 | Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 2,740 | 75% | 38.0% | 37% | 93% | 4.4% |
| 84 | Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI | 2,635 | 75% | 37.7% | 40% | 80% | 8.2% |
| 87 | Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 1,235 | 86% | 37.4% | 47% | 55% | 6.1% |
| 90 | Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 1,990 | 89% | 35.2% | 40% | 89% | 2.6% |
| 102 | Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Alpharetta, GA | 1,944 | 79% | 33.9% | 39% | 78% | 7.7% |
| 105 | Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI | 1,133 | 71% | 33.8% | 49% | 86% | 4.9% |
| 113 | Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 1,527 | 85% | 32.4% | 50% | 71% | 3.6% |
| 120 | New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA | 3,771 | 85% | 31.6% | 46% | 90% | 2.0% |
| 126 | Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA | 1,142 | 65% | 30.7% | 51% | 94% | 2.1% |
| 130 | Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA | 1,361 | 74% | 29.6% | 48% | 95% | 1.6% |
| 155 | Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ | 1,739 | 61% | 24.7% | 61% | 83% | 4.3% |
Cite this table: G2M Insights, "America's Most Competitive Broadband Markets: 189 Metros Ranked by Real Choice," G2M Communications Research, edition 2025-12-31-v7, g2m.ai/research/communications/most-competitive-broadband-markets.
Of the eighteen metros with more than a million serviceable locations, three rank in the top twenty-five: San Francisco (5th), Houston (18th) and Tampa (21st). Twelve rank below the median. Phoenix is 155th, with 60 percent of its locations in weak tracts.
The largest markets show the duopoly-plus-fixed-wireless pattern most clearly. In New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, Seattle and Riverside, more than 89 percent of the locations with a third choice owe it to fixed wireless. At gigabit download, fewer than 5 percent of locations in any of those six metros have three providers. Most locations have two choices; very few have a third wireline provider.
A large market is not a competitive one. If your footprint is in the biggest metros, your third rival is almost always fixed wireless and your wireline duopoly is intact at every speed above the benchmark.
The least competitive rankable metros
Published with the full distribution, not as a bare list
These ten clear the same 100,000-location floor as the leaders, so what separates them is not size. It is how many addresses never reach a second provider, let alone a third.
| # | Metro | Providers per location | Exactly one | 3+ | Weak tracts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 180 | Worcester, MA-CT | 41.1% | 15.1% | 83.1% | |
| 181 | Bakersfield, CA | 44.8% | 14.8% | 77.5% | |
| 182 | Asheville, NC | 48.2% | 13.7% | 83.1% | |
| 183 | Flint, MI | 58.3% | 12.7% | 81.8% | |
| 184 | Springfield, MA | 52.8% | 11.3% | 83.9% | |
| 185 | Duluth, MN-WI | 48.4% | 10.0% | 88.7% | |
| 186 | Barnstable Town, MA | 65.1% | 8.7% | 95.3% | |
| 187 | Olympia-Lacey-Tumwater, WA | 61.2% | 7.3% | 98.0% | |
| 188 | Prescott Valley-Prescott, AZ | 64.0% | 4.9% | 98.8% | |
| 189 | Anchorage, AK | 76.6% | 0.0% | 100.0% |
Cite this table: G2M Insights, "America's Most Competitive Broadband Markets: 189 Metros Ranked by Real Choice," G2M Communications Research, edition 2025-12-31-v7, g2m.ai/research/communications/most-competitive-broadband-markets.
Anchorage has no location with three credible providers and three quarters with exactly one. Barnstable, Springfield, Flint and Worcester are one-provider markets for half or more of their locations, despite being in densely settled states.
These are availability findings. They say nothing about what those households pay, what speeds they get, or whether they have subscribed at all.
A one-provider market is an exposure, not a comfort. It is where a fixed-wireless entrant or a subsidized fiber build adds a competitor at your addresses first.
Sensitivity to the definition
Every alternative threshold we tested, and what it changes
Any ranking of this kind depends on where the bar is set, so we set it five ways and publish all of them. The table shows how closely each alternative ranking tracks the primary one.
| Definition | National 3+ share | Rank correlation | Top-10 overlap |
|---|---|---|---|
| 100/20, cable + fiber + licensed fixed wireless (primary) | 38.1% | 1.00 | 10 of 10 |
| 250/25, cable + fiber + licensed fixed wireless | 12.2% | 0.79 | 8 of 10 |
| 100/20, cable + fiber only | 10.5% | 0.76 | 6 of 10 |
| 1000/20, cable + fiber + licensed fixed wireless | 10.1% | 0.71 | 6 of 10 |
| 100/20, all terrestrial fixed wireless | 46.1% | 0.64 | 3 of 10 |
| 1000/100, cable + fiber + licensed fixed wireless | 3.6% | 0.54 | 4 of 10 |
Cite this table: G2M Insights, "America's Most Competitive Broadband Markets: 189 Metros Ranked by Real Choice," G2M Communications Research, edition 2025-12-31-v7, g2m.ai/research/communications/most-competitive-broadband-markets.
Twenty-three metros sit in the top thirty under the primary, secondary, wireline-only and 250/25 definitions: Corpus Christi, TX, Gulfport-Biloxi, MS, San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA, Killeen-Temple, TX, Huntsville, AL, Ogden-Clearfield, UT, Kansas City, MO-KS, Salt Lake City, UT, Waco, TX, New Haven-Milford, CT, Clarksville, TN-KY, Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA, Raleigh-Cary, NC, Scranton--Wilkes-Barre, PA, Montgomery, AL, Provo-Orem, UT, Augusta-Richmond County, GA-SC, Hartford-East Hartford-Middletown, CT, Knoxville, TN, Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT, Durham-Chapel Hill, NC, Columbus, GA-AL, Colorado Springs, CO. These 23 rank as competitive under any of the definitions tested.
One definition was tested and not adopted. Counting unlicensed fixed wireless as well as licensed lifts the national 3+ share to 46 percent and puts Modesto, San Jose, Reno, Stockton, Fresno and Bakersfield into the top twenty. Under the primary definition those metros rank between 89th and 181st. The concentration of unlicensed fixed-wireless filings in California's Central Valley and in Puerto Rico is a real feature of the data, but it is a finding about reporting, not about choice, and we do not rank on it.
A 100 Mbps upload threshold, likewise, is not a competition measure. It leaves a quarter of metro locations with no qualifying provider at all, because most cable gigabit tiers report 35 to 49 Mbps upstream. It is included in the full rankings for completeness.
Whatever threshold you use internally, publish it with the number. The ranking changes little between 100/20 and 250/25 and changes completely at 100 Mbps upload, which is where cable and fiber part ways.
What it means for your footprint
Four findings, read from the operator's side of the table
- Count switchable rivals, not filers. In most metros a household has one other wireline provider to switch to, and the third choice, where it exists, is fixed wireless.
- The duopoly holds until the speed bar moves. At a gigabit download, only Huntsville has a third wireline provider at more than half its addresses.
- Scale your fixed-wireless response to the column, not the headline. Fixed wireless is the marginal competitor in the mid-sized metros at the top of this table; in the largest markets it is nearly the only third choice there is.
- A big metro is not a competitive one. New York and Los Angeles sit in the middle of the table, and the largest markets are the least likely to have a third wireline provider.
These are availability findings. They locate where a household has somewhere else to go; they do not say what it pays, what speed it gets, or whether it has switched.
Methodology and limitations
Sources, definitions, scope and disclosures
Data
FCC Broadband Data Collection, fixed availability at public Broadband Serviceable Location IDs, vintage 31 December 2025. Edition 2025-12-31-v7. This article is pinned to that edition and will not change when the explorer's data refreshes.
Geography
Metropolitan Statistical Areas as delineated by OMB in March 2020, the vintage the FCC's published geography uses. 392 MSAs across 52 jurisdictions. Micropolitan areas are excluded. Metros that exist only in later delineations, such as Waterbury-Shelton, CT, are absent by design.
Credible provider
A provider reporting cable, fiber-to-the-premises or licensed fixed wireless at 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload or better at the location. Satellite, copper, unlicensed fixed wireless and mobile are never counted. Providers count in full or not at all; there is no fractional weighting. Filings marked business-only, about nine percent of all records, are excluded, so every figure describes service available to households.
Scores
Primary score: share of a metro's serviceable locations with three or more credible providers. No composite. Secondary table: same technologies at 1000 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload. Weak tracts: census tracts in which fewer than 25 percent of locations have three or more credible providers.
Rankable metros
At least 100,000 reported serviceable locations and complete block-level evidence in every constituent state. 189 of 392 qualify.
Fixed-wireless comparability
Source files are incomplete for LBR fixed wireless in Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Hawaii and Rhode Island, and for unlicensed fixed wireless in Connecticut. Those technologies are excluded from the primary ranking. Comparisons that include them remain incomplete.
What the data is not
Reported serviceable locations are not households, subscribers, adoption, market share, capacity, measured performance or proof that service can be ordered. No trend is reported because one reconciled location-level release exists.
Operator identification
This ranking reports provider counts without naming operators. Our companion studies use a reviewed crosswalk linking FCC filing entities to brands and parent companies.
No trend
This is the first fully reconciled national release of the location-level data. When a second comparable release exists we will report change. Until then no growth, gain or decline is claimed.
No price
The FCC Urban Rate Survey carries no metro geography, so competition cannot be set against price at this grain. At state level we find no relationship between the two once Alaska is set aside.
Full rankings and explorer
All 189 metros under all seven definitions, pinned to edition 2025-12-31-v7. The Broadband Market Explorer follows the current release and may differ.