Report: US Broadband Market Edging Towards Saturation
July 3, 2008 · Print This Article
The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Internet and American Life project has been commissioning surveys since the late ’90s that provide perhaps the clearest picture of the role of the Internet in the US. Their latest survey is out, and the data once again paint a picture of Internet use that may seem foreign to the readership of a technology site. When it comes to access, it appears that those who can get and afford broadband already have it, while a substantial population just isn’t interested in faster speeds. Meanwhile, a full quarter of the US population doesn’t seem interested in getting online at all.
The survey (PDF; raw data available) was performed by random dialing in April and May of this year. Over 2,200 adults responded to at least some of the questions, giving the numbers a margin of error in the two to three percent range. It started by asking whether the respondents were satisfied with the way the country is headed; the responses indicated a record amount of dissatisfaction, which may have influenced the poll by causing people to answer the remaining questions from a jaundiced perspective.
For the most part, many of the answers appeared to be little changed for the last several years. The data for many questions is noisy, in that absolute numbers bounced around within a narrow range that’s close to the statistical margin of error; given that, it’s not clear that there have significant trends since 2005 or earlier. Roughly three-quarters of US adults are online at home or at work, and nearly 90 percent of them have been online for three years or more. For comparison’s sake, that’s roughly the same percentage that uses a cell phone. The one trend here is in frequency of use; the number with access who report having been online yesterday has gone up consistently, and now stands at 70 percent.
55 percent of the US now has broadband at home. After a strong rise for several years, that number is barely changed sine the end of last year. Dial-up, however, has continued to decline, with the percentage of users about to cross into the single-digits; more people now have wireless Internet access, through things like satellite receivers, than phone in. The dynamics may have a correlation with prices. Overall, prices remain little changed for the past few years, with the largest group (40 percent of users) paying in the $20-40 range. Broadband prices, however, have edged down slowly during that time while dialup costs have flattened, and now started to rise, suggesting it is becoming a niche specialization.
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