Long shortchanged in broadband access, rural areas of the U.S. are now at the vanguard in the installation of high speed Internet access, according to a comScore Inc. study released Wednesday. The market research firm said broadband growth in rural areas is now outpacing growth in urban and suburban areas.

The deployment of broadband technology and expanding broadband penetration in rural areas has been a major goal of the Federal Communications Commission in recent months. The cost of providing broadband in rural areas is generally higher than in urban and suburban areas, because of the high costs of providing equipment in sparsely populated regions.

ComScore said broadband penetration rates in rural areas have been growing at a 16% rate over the past two years versus an 11% rate in metropolitan areas. For purposes of the study, a rural market has a population of less than 10,000 while a metropolitan area has a population of 50,000-plus, according to comScore. In between are micropolitan areas with populations between 10,000 and 50,000, which grew 14 percentage points in the last two years.

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— W. David Gardner, InformationWeek