Home Broadband Usage Reaches 55 Percent
By Anna Johnson on July 9th, 2008Research by PEW/Internet reveals that over half of U.S. adults now have broadband Internet connections at home, with the percentage of adult broadband users increasing from 47 percent in March 2007 to 55 percent in April 2008.
This follows on from a rise in home broadband adoption from 42 percent in March 2006 to 47 percent in March 2007.
Meanwhile, when asked to describe their broadband connection, 29 percent of home broadband users said they had a premium broadband connection which gave them faster Internet access, 54 percent said they had a basic broadband service, and 16 percent didn’t know what kind of broadband they had.
Growth in broadband adoption was flat among poor and African Americans, with just 25 percent of low-income Americans (those with household incomes of $20,000 p.a. or less) having home broadband at home, slightly down from the 28 percent figure reported in March 2007. Similarly, while 43 percent of African Americans have home broadband, this reflects only a small rise from the 40 percent of African Americans who had home broadband in March 2007.
The biggest growth in home broadband usage was among Americans aged 50 years and over, whose home broadband usage jumped by 26 percent from 2007 to 2008. Half of Americans aged between 50 and 64 now have broadband at home, while 19 percent of Americans aged 65 and older have home broadband access.
Lower to middle income earning Americans also switched to broadband in droves, with households earning between $20,000 and $40,000 p.a. increasing their use of home broadband by 24 percent between 2007 and 2008. Now, some 45 percent of people in that income bracket have broadband at home.
Broadband penetration among rural households is growing, with 38 percent of Americans living in rural areas now using home broadband, up from 31 percent in 2007. This constitutes a growth rate of 23 percent from 2007 to 2008. In U.S. towns and cities, 57 percent of urban residents have home broadband and 60 percent of suburban residents have such Internet access.
As can be expected, as broadband usage grows, so too does dial-up Internet usage decline. Now, just 10 percent of Americans use dial-up internet connections at home.
All this is valuable information for Internet marketers. Want to put up that bandwidth hogging video clip on your site? Well, depending on your target market you may be reaching – or alienating – most of your target market.
