Cost, Crotchetiness Keep Broadband Out of 1/3 of U.S. Homes

by: Ryan Singel

More than a third of American adults don’t have a fast internet connection at home, leaving some 80 million adults and 13 million children at a distinct disadvantage in a wired world, according to an FCC report released Tuesday.

The survey, conducted by phone last fall, comes less than a month before the FCC gives Congress the country’s first comprehensive plan to make broadband ubiquitous and affordable. The survey, Broadband Adoption and Use in America (.pdf), was intended to help the agency figure out why broadband adoption is so low and what it can do to bring the wonders of Facebook, Twitter, online education and sophisticated time wasting to millions more.

Not surprisingly, more than a third of broadband laggards, 36 percent, cited the high cost of broadband and technology, even as entry-level computers and laptops have become very affordable. But survey users report they spend an average of $41 a month on broadband — which comes to nearly $500 annually.

Others say they lack the skills to get online (10 percent) or think it’s too dangerous to either their financial security or their morals (also 10 percent).

Nearly 20 percent without broadband say they don’t bother to subscribe, because there are 800 million web sites, but nothin’s on — or if they have dial-up, that there’s nothing worth getting faster.

The survey also found that most without broadband cited a number of concerns, so that a grumpy grandpa who says he doesn’t need that there Twitter also said it was just too darn expensive.

While the causes vary, the good news is that 30 percent are “Near Converts” who’d like broadband but mostly stay away due to the cost. Digital Hopefuls, a category that leans heavily toward Hispanic and African Americans, think broadband would be good, but many lack the money and skills needed to get online.

And then there’s the group that’s just never going to go online — even if you gave them iPads for free — whom the FCC delicately describes as “Digitally Distant.” They’re mostly older people, many of whom are retirees.

The report also found divisions along income, education and race. For example, 52 percent of Americans in households with annual incomes of $50,000 or below have broadband at home, compared with 87 percent of those in households with incomes above that level.

The report will bolster telecom arguments that the nation’s broadband plan should be mostly about educating users, promoting adoption and even subsidizing construction or broadband connections. While activist groups are strong supporters of the government closing the so-called digital divide, they see the best hope for that in larger structural changes to the market, like forcing carriers to rent their lines to competitors or making fiber a public utility rented out to ISPs.

Those ideas are anathema to the telecom industry, which told the FCC Monday that any moves to force them to rent out their wired infrastructure at fair rates would lead to stifling and drawn-out lawsuits.

The FCC’s national broadband plan is due to Congress on March 17, though the feds are in the process of handing out more than $4 billion in stimulus funds already.

From: Wired