NTCA Report Quantifies Broadband Benefits, Adoption Challenges

Three in 10 US adults do not use the Internet at home -- and getting them online will be considerably more challenging than connecting the first seven, notes a paper released from NTCA -- The Rural Broadband Association.

But the effort would be worthwhile, argues author and NTCA economist Rick Schadelbauer in the paper titled “Conquering the Challenges of Broadband Adoption.” In the paper Schadelbauer also makes a case for why he believes smartphones are not a suitable replacement for landline broadband services.

The 30% of US adults who are not currently connected at home is comprised of roughly equal measures of people who use the Internet somewhere else and those who do not use it at all, according to Schadelbauer. It would be particularly challenging to get the latter group online because a Pew Research Center survey found that 92% of those people said they had no interest in getting online. Others likely do not connect because they cannot afford it or because it is not available to them.