Why it will Be Hard to Close the Broadband Divide
WHY IT WILL BE HARD TO CLOSE THE BROADBAND DIVIDE
[SOURCE: Pew Research, AUTHOR: John B. Horrigan]
According to the Pew Internet Project's February 2007 survey, 47% of American adults have broadband at home, nearly double the 24% penetration level of three years earlier. With home broadband penetration poised to surpass 50% this year, it will have taken 9 years from the time the service became widely available for home high-speed to reach half the population. To put this in context, it took 10 years for the compact disc player to reach 50% of consumers, 15 years for cell phones, and 18 years for color TV. Each of those technologies, like broadband, represented an upgrade from a good or service with which most consumers had experience. But there are two large segments of the population without broadband: those who are not Internet users, and those who have home Internet access, but use dial-up connections. Some 29% of Americans do not use the Internet, and 15% have dial-up Internet access from home. Non-Internet users as a group are disproportionately old and poor. Non-Internet users do not have very positive attitudes about information technology. Moreover, non-Internet users are apt to see the online environment as a dangerous place that is, a place with inappropriate or irrelevant content. Improving infrastructure availability will help, especially in rural areas, but not by enough to alter the U.S. position in the world. What, then, could policymakers do? One answer is to renew focus on demand-side stimulation targeted at hard-to-reach populations.
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/556/why-it-will-be-hard-to-close-the-broadba...
* And the Broadband growth slows
[SOURCE: GigaOM, AUTHOR: Om Malik]
The law of large numbers eventually catches up with everyone, so why would the new broadband subscription numbers be any different. And that’s precisely what is happening to the big three US broadband providers: AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. The problem is that the slowdown in new additions is happening at much faster rate that one would think. According to UBS Research, the net additions in the quarter for AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast were 1.018 million combined versus 1.67 million last quarter and 1.245 million in the second quarter of 2006.
http://gigaom.com/2007/07/31/and-the-broadband-growth-slows/