Broadband is high-speed, always on communications that is capable of carrying voice, video and data simultaneously. This definition has several parts. First: "high speed". Generally, this is anything faster than a dialup connection. Second: "always on". This means that you can log on instantly (no waiting, as with dial-up service). Third: "voice, video and data". That means that broadband can carry moving images of people plus their voices plus words and numbers -- all at once, seamlessly.

Although various minimum speeds have been used in definitions of broadband, ranging up from 64 Kbps up to 1.0 Mbps, the OECD report is typical in counting only download speeds equal to or faster than 256 Kbps as broadband, and the US FCC use 200 Kbps in their definition. More generally, anything faster than a 56 Kbps dialup connection in the US is often considered a broadband connection.

Broadband availability is currently a hot issue throughout rural America. Most rural areas throughout the US are limited to dialup connections only. This is because services such as DSL and Cable internet depend on the capacity of the local telephone and cable TV companies to provide them. Many rural towns do not have cable TV, and do not have DSL capable telephone hub stations, preventing them from getting DSL or Cable access. Some people in rural areas can receive satellite internet, and others can gain access wirelessly if a local WISP exists, but in many cases these are costly alternatives to DSL and Cable.

In practice, the advertised bandwidth is not always reliably available to the customer; ISPs often allow a greater number of subscribers than their backbone connection can handle, under the assumption that most users will not be using their full connection capacity very frequently. This aggregation strategy works more often than not, so users can typically burst to their full bandwidth most of the time; however, peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing systems, often requiring extended durations of high bandwidth, stress these assumptions, and can cause major problems for ISPs who have excessively overbooked their capacity. So, even people who reside in broadband ready areas may not be able to get service.