US
Broadband Usage Breaks 60% Among Active Internet Users
The
September 2005 Bandwidth Report is available FM's editor does not agree with or endorse all documentaries found on FreeDocumentaries.org |
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OK, so it's official: The U.S., and the world, the "developed" part of it anyway, are now more wired than any period in history. Broadband penetration in the US broke 60% for the first time in August. In August 2005, U.S. broadband penetration jumped 1.4 percentage points to 61.32% among active Internet users. According to a recent study however, broadband growth in the US is slowing down. Meanwhile, 74.5% of wired Britons enjoy a broadband connection at home. All of this adds up to consumers having access to more information at one time than anyone ever thought possible: Endless hours of audio and video clips, (thank you porn!) and detailed info about anything and everything you ever wanted to know, whenever you want to know it. Now all we need are black patent leather uniforms and screen names, and we can have some fun real. The stats below, derived from Nielsen//NetRatings and Pew Internet data, show trends in connection speeds to the Internet for users in the United States.* Home Connectivity
in the US: In August 2005, broadband penetration in US homes rose 1.4 percentage points to 61.32%, up from 59.92% in July. This is the first time broadband penetration has exceeded 60% in the US among active Internet users. This increase of 1.4 percentage points is above the average increase in broadband of 1.14 points per month over the last five months. At the current growth rate, broadband penetration among active Internet users in US homes should break 70% by January of 2006. This assumes that the broadband adoption rate will not decrease, as the report below concludes. Most workers in the US enjoy high-speed connections to the Internet. Most use a high-speed line such as a T1 connection, and share bandwidth between computers connected to an Ethernet network. The speed of each connection decreases as more employees hook up to the LAN. As of August of 2005, of those connected to the Internet, 85.46% of US users at work enjoy a high-speed connection, up 3.82 percentage points from the 81.64% share in July. At work, 14.54% connect at 56Kbps or less. According to a recent report by Pew Internet & American Life Project broadband adoption in the United States is slowing down. John Horrigan, Pew's Director of Research, compared national surveys of Internet users in 2002 to 2005. Horrigan found that the intensity of Internet use (a product of connection speed and years of online experience) drives the number of online activities people perform, which in turn drives the adoption of broadband (processing more bits). The two factors (speed and experience) vary in their influence of use over time. In 2002 both having broadband at home and Internet experience were significant factors in Internet usage. However, in 2005 only having broadband at home had a significant influence on intensity of Internet usage. This implies that there is little pent-up demand for broadband at home. Here is what John Horrigan had to say about his findings: "We don't see a large influx of new Internet users in the U.S. anytime soon. 6% of the Internet's population is new users, and only 23% of them are on broadband, about half the overall rate. Current dialup users are less engaged in the Internet than past dialup users." Dialup users today are older, less affluent, and less educated than their 2002 counterparts. With switching costs still high, today's dialup users are less likely to switch to broadband than they were in 2002. The report concludes that slowing broadband growth may add pressure on policymakers to take a bold approach (municipal wireless broadband networks for example) to catch up to leading broadband countries like Korea or Canada (Drivers of Intensity of Internet Use - 2002). About The Bandwidth
Report: Note: Portions of this article provided by PRWEB. |
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