WASHINGTON - Nearly half (47 percent) of all adult Americans now have a high-speed Internet connection at home, according to a survey conducted in February by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The percentage grew from 42 percent in early 2006 and 30 percent in early 2005.
Among individuals who use the Internet at home, 70 percent have a high-speed connection, while 23 percent use dial-up.The 12-percent growth rate from 2006 to 2007 trails the 40-percent increase during the 2005-2006 timeframe, when many people in the middle-income and older age groups acquired home broadband connections. Those groups continued to show increases in home broadband adoption into early 2007, but at slower rates than in the past.
Among adults who live in households where the annual income falls between $30,000 and $50,000 annually, home broadband adoption stood at 46 percent in early 2007, up 3 percentage points over 2006.
Among senior citizens (age 65 and older), home broadband adoption stood at 15 percent in early 2007, up 2 percentage points over 2006.
Among people between the ages of 50 and 64, 40 percent have home high-speed connections, up 2 percentage points over 2006.
"The moderate growth in home high-speed adoption from 2006 to 2007 is partly a reflection of strong prior-year growth; the low-hanging fruit was picked in 2005," said John B. Horrigan, associate director of research at the Pew Internet & American Life project and co-author of the report. "Luring remaining hard-to-get adults to home broadband is likely to involve showing them the relevance of online content."
Several groups exhibited strong growth in home broadband adoption from 2006 to 2007. Forty percent of African-Americans now have broadband at home, up 8 percent over 2006. Thirty-one percent of those living in rural areas have broadband at home, up 6 percent over 2006. Low-income households (that is, adults who report living in households with annual household incomes under $30,000 annually) rose 9 percentage points over 2006 to a 2007 level of 30 percent.
"Broadband adoption in rural America faces two challenges: network availability and demographics," said Aaron Smith, research specialist at the Pew Internet Project and co-author of the report. "Rural Americans tend to be older, less-avid online users, and thus less interested in fast home connections. And some parts in rural America also simply don't have the infrastructure for providing broadband at home."
The Pew Internet Project's report on broadband adoption is based on its February-March survey of 2,200 adults, 996 of whom were home broadband users. The Pew Internet Project is a nonprofit, non-partisan initiative of the Pew Research Center that produces reports exploring the impact of the Internet on children, families, communities, the workplace, schools, health care, and civic and political life. Support for the nonprofit Pew Internet Project is provided by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
