Rural Internet describes the characteristics of Internet service in rural areas (also referred to as "the country" or "countryside"), which are settled places outside towns and cities. Inhabitants live in villages, hamlets, on farms and in other isolated houses. Mountains and other terrain can impede rural Internet access.

High-speed, wireless Internet service is becoming increasingly common in rural areas. Here, service providers deliver Internet service over radio-frequency via special radio-equipped antennas.^{[citation needed]}

Methods for broadband Internet access in rural areas include:

Scholarship on the topic of the digital divide has shifted from an understanding of people who do and do not have access to the internet to an analysis of the quality of internet access. Because opting out of internet activity is no longer a choice with internet-only customer service, online banking, and online schooling, internet access has become an increasing need in rural communities with inadequate infrastructure.

Although government programs such as E-rate provisions provide internet connection to schools and libraries under the U.S. federal government, more general internet access to a broader community has not been directly addressed in policy. The provision of "national" internet services tends to favor urban metropolitan regions. For a long time, even, many within the U.S. considered the internet to be a luxury. In 2001, then FCC Chair Michael Powell said, “I think there’s a Mercedes divide. I’d like to have one. I can’t afford one” when asked about solutions to shrinking the digital divide. At the time, the internet was still largely new, as less than half of the U.S. did not have access to any home internet. In 2021, 77% of Americans have home broadband according to the most recent Pew Research Center survey. The attitude in the U.S. has largely shifted since Powell's remarks, however, as under the current administration and President Joe Biden there is a common belief that "broadband is infrastructure" and that is must be treated as such.

The digital divide is even more prominent in developing countries, where physical access to internet services are at a much lower rate. While developed countries such as the U.S. face the challenge of providing universal service (ensuring that everyone has access to internet service in the home), developing countries face the challenge of providing universal access (ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to make use of the internet). For example, in Egypt there are only about six phone lines per 100 people, with less than two lines per 100 people in rural areas, which makes it even more difficult for people to access the internet.

The United States Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service has provided numerous studies and data on the Internet in rural America. One such article from the Agricultural Outlook magazine, Communications & the Internet in Rural America, summarizes internet uses in rural areas of the United States in 2002. It indicates, "Internet use by rural and urban households has also increased significantly during the 1990s, so significantly that it has one of the fastest rates of adoption for any household service."

Another area for inclusion of the Internet is American farming. One study reviewed data from 2003 and found that "56 percent of farm operators used the Internet while 31 percent of rural workers used it at their place of work." In later years challenges to economical rural telecommunications remain. People in inner city areas are closer together, so the access network to connect them is shorter and cheaper to build and maintain, while rural areas require more equipment per customer. However, even with this challenge the demand for services continues to grow.