A full 55% of all US adults now have a high-speed Internet connection at home, according to a May 2008 survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Among home Internet users, 79% have broadband and 15% use dial-up.

As broadband use becomes more widespread, it is worth examining the demographics of consumers who are either still on dial-up or do not use the Internet at all.

For dial-up users, the main demographic difference Pew found was in gender: 61% of dial-up users were female, and 39% were male.

Among non-Internet users, the main differences were in education and income. Only 9% of college graduates, and just 3% of US adults with an annual income of $100,000 or more, said they did not use the Internet.

"The flat growth in home high-speed adoption for low-income Americans suggests that tightening household budgets may be affecting people's choice of connection speed at home," said John B. Horrigan, associate director of research at Pew, in a statement. "Broadband is more costly on a monthly basis than dial-up, and some lower-income Americans may be unwilling to take on another expense."



Pew asked dial-up users what would get them to make the switch to broadband. Among the responses were:

* 35% said the price of broadband service would have to fall.
* 19% said nothing would convince them to get broadband.
* 10%—including 15% of dial-up users in the rural US—said broadband service would have to become available where they live.

Overall, 62% of dial-up users said they were not interested in switching to broadband.

Non-Internet users gave the following reasons:

* 12% said they did not have access.
* 9% said it was too difficult or frustrating.
* 7% said it was too expensive.
* 7% said it was a waste of time.

One-third of non-Internet users said they were not interested in having Internet access at all.

eMarketer bases its broadband use projections on Federal Communications Commission (FCC) data, and measures households, not adults. Using these metrics, eMarketer predicts that nearly 75% of US households will have broadband Internet access by 2012, up from nearly 63% this year.



With broadband penetration so high, it may seem very 1990s to continue to track it. Yet broadband penetration is no longer simply considered a technological upgrade from dial-up. It has become a conduit for a host of communication and entertainment services—the so-called triple-play of voice, video and Internet access—as well as for ads placed in conjunction with those services.