Internet providers in California

21 of the operators we cover report service somewhere in California, of which 11 sell fiber. Below is how much of the state each one reaches, how California compares on choice, and what that means for a specific address.

How much choice does California actually have?

California ranks 12 of 52 for wired internet choice, better than most states. 10.1% of homes here have at most one wired company able to serve them, against 15.7% nationally.

Free to cite with attribution to WhereFiber. Rank 1 is the state with the fewest such homes. contact@wherefiber.com

Measure	California	United States
Residential locations	10,112,606	114,550,235
At most one wireline company in the block	10.1%	15.7%
In a block with no wired company at all	1.8%	1.5%
In a block where nobody reports fiber	39.1%	27.9%
In a block with exactly one fiber company	48.5%	52.2%
In a block with two or more wired companies, none of them fiber	30.3%	17.4%

California has more wireline choice than the country as a whole, because a smaller share of the state is served by a single wired company. These are floors rather than estimates, for reasons we set out in the national study. In California that third row is 183,615 residential locations with no wired option reported by anybody: not fiber, not cable, not copper.

Having a choice is not the same as having a good one. 9,087,923 California locations sit in a block with two or more wired companies. Of those, 66.3% have at least one company offering fiber, and 0.0% have nothing but copper between all of the companies reaching them. The last row of the table is the same fact counted against the whole state rather than against the households it applies to.

Two providers compared in California

Both operators in each pair report service somewhere in California, so these are choices a reader here might actually face:

Providers serving California

Share of California residential locations each operator reports it can reach. A low percentage is not a bad network. It usually means a network concentrated in a few towns.

Provider	Technology	Share of California covered
AT&T Fiber	Mixed *	71.7%
T-Mobile Home Internet	Fixed Wireless	67.0%
Verizon Fios	Mixed *	55.6%
Spectrum	Cable	47.0%
Xfinity	Cable	33.7%
Frontier Fiber	Mixed *	14.0%
Cox	Cable	8.5%
Sonic	Fiber	4.3%
Astound Broadband	Cable	3.6%
Fidium Fiber	Mixed *	1.4%
Optimum	Mixed *	0.7%
Google Fiber	Fiber	0.7%
Mediacom	Cable	0.5%
Ting Internet	Fiber	0.3%
Wyyerd Fiber	Fiber	0.3%
Zito Media	Mixed *	0.1%
Vyve Broadband	Cable	0.1%
Ubiquity (open access, wholesale only)	Fiber	Under 0.1%
Hotwire Communications	Fiber	Under 0.1%
TDS Telecom	Mixed *	Under 0.1%
Hunter Communications	Mixed *	Under 0.1%

* This operator reports several technologies to the FCC nationally, and the federal data does not break that down by state, so we cannot tell you which one reaches a specific address in California. Read the percentage as the whole company, not the brand. A national carrier files its fiber, its cable, its copper and its fixed wireless under one identifier. We mark a technology plainly only when at least 80% of what that operator reports nationally sits on it, or when its entire filing sits on one technology.

Covers the 79 operators we have mapped from FCC holding-company names to the brand people actually buy. Smaller operators that file under a name we have not yet matched are not listed here, so a local provider missing from this table may still serve you, because the address check below reads the raw filing and will show it.

Check a specific California address →

Or browse every state and city we cover.

What speeds are available across California

Share of California homes where at least one provider reports offering that speed on that technology. This is genuine state level data, the level the FCC actually publishes it at.

Technology	25/3 Mbps	100/20 Mbps	250/25 Mbps	1 Gbps / 100 Mbps
Fiber	40%	40%	40%	40%
Cable	90%	90%	90%	34%
Fixed wireless	88%	73%	41%	9%
Any technology	100%	100%	100%	66%

Cities in California

Reading this page honestly

A statewide percentage tells you about California. It does not tell you about your street. Fiber in particular was built out block by block, and nationally up to one in nine residential locations sits in a block where fiber exists and still does not reach the building, so a provider showing strong statewide coverage here can still tell you no.

Providers report their own coverage to the FCC and the data is known to overstate it. Where a provider says it cannot serve you, it is right and the filing is wrong.