Friday, September 23, 2005

Broadband Growth Slows

A new study from the Pew Internet and American Life project shows that broadband growth in the U.S. is slowing, and speculates that slowing adoption may spur worries that the United States is falling behind other countries in broadband uptake. The report said that 53% of home Internet users had broadband connections as of May 2005, up slightly from 50% of Internet users in December of 2004. The study said this was an unfavorable increase, versus the growth shown the previous year. In addition, the study found that there was less pent-up demand from dial up users for broadband connections, as overall Internet population growth has slowed. Those dial up users also are not attractive candidates for switching to broadband. The Pew study said that the dial-up users surveyed were older, lower income, less educated and relatively apathetic about Internet usage, and thus less likely to convert to broadband. The Pew survey was based on a telephone poll of 2,001 Americans, and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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