Universal Broadband Adoption: Now the Hard Work Begins

[Commentary] Writing in the Washington Post on October 22, Brian Fung relayed the tough reality that policymakers and the people and organizations working on broadband adoption have come to realize: “to get the last of the United States’ late adopters online will take more than infrastructure. It’ll require deep investment in digital education and painstaking one-on-one work that ultimately convinces offline Americans that the Internet is worth their time.” Although everyone in the U.S. may now have access to the Internet – be it over a fiber or phone line, a cell phone or even a satellite wireless network – not everyone has decided to subscribe to broadband service at home. Just over a year ago, the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released Exploring the Digital Nation which found that broadband adoption at home in the U.S. had increased to 72 percent of households in 2012 from 69 percent in 2011. But, despite the progress, the report also identified persistent gaps in home Internet use. In 2012, a significant portion -- 28 percent -- of American households did not use broadband at home.