[Chapter-delegates] US Internet Research by PEW

[Glenn McKnight]

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2013-08/pew-internet-survey-its-good-be-white-male-young-rich-and-educated

The latest Pew internet survey, which is conducted annually (though not
always with the same questions) was released today. It's an overview of the
demographics of internet access in the United States. Who has access? Who
doesn't? Who's using smartphones but not broadband? Are there still people
using dial-up? Who *are* those people? Why isn't the head of Time Warner in
jail for crimes of substandard customer service? Questions like these,
except the last one, which is unanswerable by man or god, have been
answered.

Pew's study found, not surprisingly, that the most likely broadband
internet users are white, young (18-29 years old), wealthy ($75,000+
income), male, with a college degree, and living in the suburbs. That
number drops as you move outside of those respondents: women have only a
very slightly lower rate of broadband use, but those with no high school
diploma have barely more than a one in three chance at having broadband,
compared to 89 percent among those who hold a college degree. Income and
age are the other starkest divisions; those over 65 years old and those
making less than $30,000 are near to having a mere one in two chance at
broadband.

Mobile could be seen as a fix for this, and indeed, 10 percent of
respondents said that they have mobile broadband but not home broadband.
Mobile broadband is quicker and cheaper to set up, and has a higher profit
margin for companies like Verizon and AT&T, which leads to them blanketing
the country with it. But that still leaves 20 percent of Americans with
neither mobile nor at-home broadband.

Lastly, a word about the results of the 2,252-person survey: Pew does not
provide a lower limit for "broadband" speed. Broadband has no formal
definition; some take it to mean anything that's not dial-up, which would
include DSL, cable, and fiber-optic connections. Some would include
high-end mobile networks like 4G LTE. Some would include the previous
generation of mobile network, 3G. Some would include cable and fiber-optic
but not DSL. It's all very vague! And the differences aren't small; they
could be the difference between using the internet with essentially no
speed restrictions and having to limit use to one conscientious user at a
time.

Glenn McKnight
mcknight.glenn at gmail.com
skype  gmcknight
twitter gmcknight
.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://elists.isoc.org/mailman/private/chapter-delegates/attachments/20130827/3d52e052/attachment.htm>