Alpine Communications Blog
Fast Net access slowing down
High-speed growth
dips
From
Staff and Wire Dispatches
Nearly half of all
Americans now have high-speed Internet service at home, but the growth rate for
broadband service is slowing sharply and it's still uncommon among poor and
rural residents, according to a new study.
About 47 percent of
adult Americans surveyed by the nonprofit Pew Internet & American Life
Project said they have high-speed Internet service at home, up from nearly
nothing at the start of the decade.
According to
ConnectKentucky, a program for expanding high-speed Internet access throughout
the commonwealth has helped increase broadband Internet use by 50 percent and
has brought access to 518,000 previously unserved Kentucky homes in the past two
years.
Currently, 93 percent of
The Pew report said
the national growth rate for broadband service was only 12 percent for the
one-year period that ended in March. That was down from 40 percent for the
comparable period a year earlier and the lowest rate in at least five years.
John Horrigan,
associate director for research at Pew, said broadband growth hasn't necessarily
reached a plateau.
But clearly, many
people who can afford broadband service already have it. In the future, Horrigan
said, Internet providers will have to try harder to convince those without
broadband that it's worth the cost, typically $20-$40 a month.
"I think we're at a
point where many people in the upper socio-economic groups now have broadband,"
he said. "You'd expect to see growth continue, but it's going to be in fits and
starts."
Horrigan said the
sharp decline during the past year isn't surprising, given the rapid increase in
broadband use in past years, when many cable and telecom companies offered deep
discounts for new subscribers. Also, "once you get near 50 percent of the
market, sustaining growth gets more challenging," he added.
Not surprisingly,
high-speed Internet service is more common in urban areas and among the wealthy.
According to the Pew
study, about 52 percent of urban residents and about 49 percent of suburban
residents have high-speed Internet access. Among rural residents, only about 31
percent have it.
The study's findings
come as the Federal Communications Commission conducts an inquiry into whether
broadband providers -- primarily cable and telephone companies -- are doing
enough to provide rural and poor Americans access to high-speed Internet service
and all that it offers, from entertainment to educational programs.
Depending on the
outcome of the FCC inquiry, regulators could set rate caps or take other steps
to encourage broadband growth.
According to the Pew
study, some minorities also are less likely than whites to have broadband
service at home.
Only 29 percent of
Hispanics, for instance, have home broadband service. About 40 percent of
African Americans have home broadband service, a sharp rise from 31 percent a
year earlier. Among white non-Hispanics, about 48 percent said they had
high-speed Internet service at home.
Income also matters.
More than three-fourths of adults with annual incomes of more than $75,000 have
high-speed Internet service at home, while only 30 percent of those with incomes
of less than $30,000 have it.
Americans who do have
broadband service use it far more than those with slower dial-up service,
according to the study. About 65 percent of broadband subscribers said they use
the Internet or e-mail at home on a daily basis, compared with 40 percent of
dial-up service subscribers.
Last month, U.S. Rep.
Rick Boucher, D-Va., outlined a four-step plan to improve broadband access to
the many parts of the
He said he would push
federal lawmakers to adopt a program similar to ConnectKentucky, which uses
public and private funding to promote DSL, cable, fixed wireless, satellite and
other systems to blanket the state with service.
The Pew study was
based on a phone survey of 2,200 adults between February and March. The margin
of error is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.
Cox News Service contributed to this story
