Broadband Adoption Barriers
Last updated: August 26, 2009 - 8:08am
The great thing about bringing people together to talk about broadband adoption data is that you always get new ideas for questions to pursue in the future. At the "Building the Fact" base workshop last week, this dynamic played out as expected. Susannah Fox, from the Pew Internet Project, reminded listeners of the growth in broadband adoption at home from just 3% of Americans in 2000 to 63% as of April 2009. Link Hoewing at Verizon noted the fast adoption pace of broadband relative to other communications technologies. But he, and others, pointed out how we have likely entered a maturing phase on the adoption curve, meaning that reaching the remaining 37% of non-adopters will be a challenge. Peter Stenberg from the Agriculture Department highlighted particular challenges for rural Americans. We were also reminded how strongly broadband can impact how people get information.
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Relative to broadband users, dial-up users are older, have lower incomes, have lower levels of educational attainment, are more likely to be African American, and more likely to live in rural areas. For non-internet users, these same factors are also relevant, but in much more pronounced ways. A notable demographic difference in comparing dial-up with non-users is gender: dial-up users are more likely to be male and non-users more likely to be female.
Several of the factors common to non-broadband use are related. Those with lower levels of education have, on average, lower incomes, as do rural Americans, senior citizens, and African Americans. Two questions that arise are whether these different effects are independent of one another and, if they are, which ones are more strongly related to broadband adoption.
It turns out that a number of demographic or socio-economic factors are positively correlated with home broadband adoption, while others are negatively correlated, and that these relationships are independent of one another control de acceso . The following shows those factors that are positively and negatively correlated with home broadband adoption.6They are listed in order of magnitude, that is, having a high income is a stronger predictor of having broadband than being a parent and not having graduated from high school is more strongly associated with not having broadband than living in rural America.