Analysis It's still a dial-up world: High-speed broadband slows itself down

from NewsLink, Vol. 6, No. 2, Winter 2002

 

Conventional wisdom suggests that residential consumers are chomping at the bit for broadband Internet connections and are willing to pay extra for cable modem and digital subscriber lines (DSL) to take advantage of rich media. Yet less than 10 million customers use high-speed connections. However, the overwhelming majority of the nation's 70 million users continue to log on in the low-tech manner that America Online has come to love: dial-up modems. According to industry observers, 78 percent of all online customers use dial-up modems to get online – a statistic that reflects the popularity of e-mail over streaming video and music. Approximately 13 percent of US customers prefer the high-speed services of cable modems and DSL. The pattern holds for respondents to BHI's State of the Household Survey 2002. Forty-two percent of all respondents reported using dial-up. Meanwhile, 38 percent of BHI survey respondents said they used high-speed modems (27 percent cable modems; 11 percent DSL). Dial-up is not about to go away anytime soon. According to the Cahners In-Stat Group, most households will continue using dial-up access in the year 2005. Dial-up technology benefits from troubles in the high-speed Internet service market. Rising prices for broadband and fewer DSL service providers have dampened the growth in this market. NewsLink is the quarterly newsletter of the Beacon Hill Institute for Public Policy Research at Suffolk University. © 1996-2002. All rights reserved.

 

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