A couple years ago, the Pew Research Center noted a modest decline in the broadband service adoption rate among American households, but new data it released this week shows that in the last year, things are again on a growth course.
“Between 2013 and 2015, the share of Americans with home broadband service decreased slightly – from 70 percent to 67 percent,” Pew reports. “But in the past year, broadband adoption rates have returned to an upward trajectory. As of November 2016, nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of Americans indicate that they have broadband service at home.”
That’s reportedly the highest level since the Center began tracking the data in early 2000. Pew adds that there are important differences in broadband adoption based on factors including age, income, geographic location, and racial/ethnic background.
“For instance, those who have not graduated from high school are nearly three times less likely than college graduates to have home broadband service (34 percent vs. 91 percent),” Pew reports. “Even as broadband adoption has been on the rise, 12 percent of Americans say they are ‘smartphone dependent’ when it comes to their online access – meaning they own a smartphone but lack traditional broadband service at home.”
Connecting low-income Americans is part of the goals set by programs such as Comcast Internet Essentials. The operator announced several expansions to the effort in 2016, and Comcast Senior Executive VP and Chief Diversity Officer David L. Cohen reported last March that in less than five years, Internet Essentials connected more than 2.4 million Americans, or more than 600,000 low-income families, to the internet at home. “To put that in perspective, 2.4 million people is larger than the populations of 97 of the 100 largest cities in America,” Cohen says.
More on Comcast’s program is here.
A fact sheet about the Pew Research Center’s recently released data on broadband adoption is here.
