FCC: 93 Million Americans Lack High-Speed Access

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FCC: 93 Million Americans Lack High-Speed Access
Survey Findings To Be Released At Brookings Institute On Feb. 23
John Eggerton -- Multichannel News, 2/23/2010 12:00:00 AM
The Federal Communications Commission says that due to cost and a lack of digital literacy, over one-third of the country does not have home high-speed Internet access (defined as other than dial-up service).

Moreover, almost one in five Americans believe that the Internet is a waste of time; that it has nothing that interests them; or they are fine with dial-up access.

Those findings come from an agency consumer survey conducted for the National Broadband Plan, due to Congress March 17.

But the glass-half-full view -- or over two-thirds-full actually -- is that 78% of adults are Internet users, broadband or dial-up, home, business or otherwise.

The survey, a random phone survey conducted in October and November, found that 80 million adults (and 13 million kids) do not have high-speed Internet at home.

More than one-third of the non-adopters (28 million adults) indicated that they don't have broadband because either the price of service is too high (15%); they can't afford a computer; installation costs are too high (10%); or they don't want a long-term service contract (9%). According to the survey, the average monthly broadband bill is $41.

Some 22% of respondents said they don't have the "digital skills" (12%) or are concerned about potential hazards like inappropriate content or threats to the security of personal information.

For most non-adopters, there were multiple factors for not crossing over that digital bridge. Over half the 80 million non-adopters listed at least three factors.

Non-adopters were divided into four categories: near converts (30%); digital hopefuls (22%); digitally uncomfortable (20%); and digitally distant (28%).

As the name suggests, the category closest to conversion is near converts, comprised primarily of dial-up Internet users, or ones who use the Net away from home. Cost was was the leading reason for their lack of high-speed service.

"We need to tackle the challenge of connecting 93 million Americans to our broadband future," said FCC chairman Julius Genachowski in announcing the new study, which is being released at the Brookings Institution Tuesday morning.

The survey, overseen by John Horrigan, director of consumer research for the Omnibus Broadband Initiative, polled 5,005 adults between October 19 and November 23, 2009. the margin of error is plus or minus 1.6 percentage points. There was a Spanish-language option for taking the survey, and a separate sampling of 2,334 nonadopters for which the margin of error is 2.2%.