July 20, 2007
47% of Americans have broadband at home
I find the Pew reports really interesting. Here’s a snippet from a recent one:
Pew Internet: Home Broadband Adoption 2007
47% of adults have high-speed internet connections at home as of early March 2007, up five percentage points from a year earlier.
For those of us living in Silicon Valley, the idea that only 47% have broadband is pretty unthinkable. Here we have broadband galore! Heck, there’s free WiFi in Mountain View, Sunnyvale, and a few other cities. Meanwhile, in places like South Korea, broadband penetration passed 70% in 2003.
Yet, we as a nation only made a 5 percentage point gain year over year. In fact, this was one of the slowest years of broadband uptake according to the report:
The fact is that the United States of America is a pretty huge country, and we have people living scattered throughout. It’s going to be really hard… no… really expensive to get everyone on broadband as we don’t live in densities like they do in Korea, Japan, etc. How will people in South Dakota and much of New Hampshire ever get broadband? I suspect that there’s probably a good correlation between Starbucks availability and broadband penetration. 
Another point is that the definition of broadband is kind of fuzzy - my parents’ broadband is 992kbps where as mine is 15,132 kbps. Yep, mine is almost 15x faster. And it’s not like my parents live in the middle of nowhere either!
For those of us working Internet applications and services this is something to keep in mind: broadband isn’t everywhere, and it probably won’t be everywhere for a long time. And even then, the speed won’t be all that consistent - some people will have super fast access, and some people won’t. We must build products and services that are usable by all of these people, if we want to have the largest possible customer set.
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4 Comments to “47% of Americans have broadband at home”
July 20th, 2007 at 10:05 am
If almost half the country has a high-speed connection, I’d be shocked.
I live in the Silicon Valley, and there are almost no options for broadband in my neighborhood. We’re too far for DSL, and digital cable just arrived (and it’s waaaay too expensive). My neighbors who have signed up for digital cable are having lots of problems because the lines are in terrible condition. Sheesh, we don’t even have reliable cell phone coverage in my neighborhood.
I have several sets of friends who can’t even get cable TV because their houses are a bit too far off the beaten path. (Cable TV penetration in the US is DOWN to 62%. [http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6425963.html] I recall hearing elsewhere that only 85% of homes are passed by cable providers.)
July 21st, 2007 at 9:16 am
Expensive? C’mon - US is the most powerful and wealthiest country second to none. You’ve been on the moon and can easily spend gaziljon USD per day in Iraq. Oh and by the way - broadband is everywhere, it really-really is, but only if you remember that there’s life outside US. I remember when Macbook’s (Pro first) dropped internal modem. Only americans whined (and loud) :-).
July 21st, 2007 at 9:19 pm
>US is the most powerful and wealthiest country second to none. You’ve been on the moon and can easily spend gaziljon USD per day in Iraq
True, but because telecommunications is generally a private enterprise here, it’s up to the marketplace to decide who should get broadband, and who shouldn’t.
And even if We, The People, decided that getting broadband to everyone was a national priority and worth government intervention, our government still couldn’t do it because we’re -borrowing- a gazillion USD per day to spend in Iraq.
July 22nd, 2007 at 9:49 am
You’e in the right track. Today, I concider water, electricity, telecommunication (and perhaps banking) basic services, government shall provide to everyone in everywhere (in case private business cannot).
On the other hand, your credit record is still good, borrow some more
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