Broadband Usage Increases, And So Does The Price
About 63 percent of adult Americans are using broadband at home as of April 2009, up from 55 percent in May 2008, according to the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.
But during those respective periods the average monthly bill for broadband service has increased to $39 from $34.50. Customer pricing depended greatly on the number of broadband providers in the area, according to the research. The more choices customers had, the cheaper their bill. Broadband users who have four or more providers to choose from (17 percent of all high-speed users) pay an average of $32.10 per month. Users who have just one provider where they live (21 percent of users) report an average monthly bill of $44.70.
More users this year are also paying for "premium" service that provides them with faster speeds, according to Pew Research. In 2009, 34 percent of broadband users are subscribing to a faster service, up from 29 percent in 2008. Subscribers to premium service paid an average of $44.60 per month this year, compared with $38.10 in 2008. For basic service, broadband users reported a monthly bill of $37.10 in 2009, up from $32.80 in 2008.
The increase in broadband usage also breaks a stagnant period for high-speed adoption between December 2007 and December 2008, which found that broadband penetration remained in a narrow range of between 54 percent and 57 percent, according to Pew Research.
Among demographics, the largest increases in broadband adoption have come from adults ages 65 or older (30 percent in April 2009, compared with 19 percent in May 2008); households with less than $20,000 in annual income (35 percent, up from 25 percent); high-school graduates (52 percent, up from 40 percent); adults ages 50 to 64 (61 percent, up from 50 percent) and rural Americans (46 percent, up from 38 percent).
The Pew Internet Project, which interviewed 2,253 people, also found that households with annual income of more than $75,000 had 85 percent broadband adoption rate, up from 84 percent in 2008. Respondents also noted that they have cut back or canceled their cable TV service (22 percent) and cell phone service (33 percent) at a bigger rate than they have cut their online service (9 percent). A majority of home broadband users said a high-speed connection was at least somewhat important to at least one dimension of their lives, such as finding out what's going on in their community (68 percent) communicating with health-care or medical providers (65 percent), contributing to the economic growth of their community (62 percent) and sharing their views with others about key issues (58 percent).
Of the 7 percent of respondents who are dial-up Internet users (half the figure of two years ago), 32 percent said the price would have to fall for them to switch to broadband. Another 17 percent said it is not available where they live and 20 percent said nothing would get them to change.
About 21 percent of adults said they are non-Internet users, citing reasons such as not being interested in getting online, not having access and too expensive.