U.S. broadband rate up to 63% of adults
The number of Americans with fast Internet connections continues to swell even as the nation’s economy lumbers along at dial-up speed.
The U.S. broadband adoption rate rose to 63% of adults as of April, a nearly 15% increase from a year before, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project.
The adoption rate grew even though the price of home broadband increased, the study found. The monthly cost of household Internet service rose an average of nearly $5 since May 2008.
But consumers seeking to balance their budgets preferred to leave their Internet connections untouched, choosing instead to cut back on cellphone and cable television expenses.
“For many Americans, a home broadband connection is a conduit for connecting to community and economic opportunity,” John Horrigan, associate director of the Pew Internet Project, said in a statement. “That puts broadband in the ‘must keep’ category for most users.”
The survey, which has been asking respondents about broadband since June 2000, contacted 2,253 U.S. residents. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2%.
Internationally, the U.S. is still well behind in the broadband race, according to a report released late last year by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an international policy organization. Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland rank highest, with the U.S. placing 19th among the 35 countries listed in that study.
Still, though the U.S. broadband penetration rate of 63% might seem like a lackluster number, the progress is more obvious when compared with where the nation was nine years ago. At that time only 6% of Internet users had high-speed connections.
Back then, the much slower dial-up modem was still the predominant means of going online, and data- or speed-intensive applications including online video were still years from mainstream viability. As high-speed connections came down in price and increased in availability, the modern Internet and its myriad commercial and social applications became possible.
Mimi Ito, a media scholar and cultural anthropologist, called the recession-time increase in broadband adoption “a good indication of how central and indispensable the Internet and digital media have become to our everyday lives.”
The Pew report found that some of the strongest gains were made among demographic groups whose broadband usage had been below average.
Among them were people with lower incomes, those in rural areas and Internet users 65 and older, a group whose adoption rate jumped to 30% from 19% a year ago.
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