Many dial-up users don't want broadband
NEW YORK (AP) - July 3, 2008 The findings from the Pew Internet and American Life Project
challenge the argument that broadband providers need to more
aggressively roll out supply to meet demand.
Only 14 percent of dial-up users say they're stuck with the
older, slower connection technology because they can't get
broadband in their neighborhoods, Pew reported Wednesday.
Thirty-five percent say they're still on dial-up because
broadband prices are too high, while another 19 percent say nothing
would persuade them to upgrade. The remainder have other reasons or
do not know.
"That suggests that solving the supply problem where there are
availability gaps is only going to go so far," said John Horrigan,
the study's author. "It's going to have to be a process of getting
people more engaged with information technology and demonstrating
to people it's worth it for them to make the investment of time and
money."
Nonetheless, the Pew study does support concerns that rural
Americans have more trouble getting faster Internet connections,
which bring greater opportunities to work from home or log into
classes at distant universities. Twenty-four percent of rural
dial-up users say they would get broadband if it becomes available,
compared with 11 percent for suburbanites and 3 percent for city
dwellers.
Vint Cerf, one of the Internet's key inventors and an advocate
for the idea that the government should be more active in expanding
broadband, suspects that many more dial-up users would be
interested in going high-speed if they had a better idea of what
they're missing. He pointed out that broadband access is available
from only one provider in many areas, keeping prices high and
speeds low.
"Some residential users may not see a need for higher speeds
because they don't know about or don't have ability to use high
speeds," Cerf said. "My enthusiasm for video conferencing
improved dramatically when all family members had MacBook Pros with
built-in video cameras, for example."
Overall, Pew found that 55 percent of American adults now have
broadband access at home, up from 47 percent a year earlier and 42
percent in March 2007. By contrast, only 10 percent of Americans
now have dial-up access.
Despite the increase in overall broadband adoption, though,
growth has been flat among blacks and poorer Americans.
Of the Americans with no Internet access at all, about a third
say they have no interest in logging on, even at dial-up speeds.
Nearly 20 percent of nonusers had access in the past but dropped
it. Older and lower-income Americans are most likely to be offline.
Pew's telephone study of 2,251 U.S. adults, including 1,553
Internet users, was conducted April 8 to May 11 and has a margin of
sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. The error
margins for subgroups are higher - plus or minus 7 percentage
points for the dial-up sample.