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-broadband-divide&reason=0
* 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 thats 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/
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