Frequency of use and the number and type of online activities in which people engage vary substantially by whether they have Internet access at home and by the type of home Internet connection. For example, almost one-third (31.9 percent) of Americans access the Internet on a daily basis. Ninety percent of these frequent users have Internet access in their homes. As shown in Table 2, people without Internet access at home are not only much less likely to be Internet users in general, they are also much less likely to be frequent users.

The greater number of online activities in which individuals engage, the higher the likelihood they will have broadband at home. Even though the “frequency of use” variable refers to Internet use from any location, those individuals with broadband in the home are more likely to be daily Internet users (66.1 percent) than those with dial-up at home (51.2 percent).

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Tags: cable modem, wireless, DSL. T1, high speed internet access. broadband, broad band

By far the greatest growth in household connectivity in the last two years has been in the use of broadband technologies. Computer ownership and Internet connections in the home continued to increase between September 2001 and October 2003, albeit at slowing rates (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Percent of Households with Computers and Internet Connections, Selected Years, 1997-2003*

*Note: 2001 and 2003 reflect 2000 Census-based weights and earlier years use 1990 Census-based weights.

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Tags: broad band, wireless, high speed internet access. broadband, cable modem, DSL. T1

With computers now almost as common in American homes as cable television service, the Internet continues to expand in importance as a communication, information, entertainment, and transaction tool.  One sure sign of growing reliance on this medium is the dramatic jump in high-speed, or broadband, Internet connections. The number of households willing to pay a premium over the cost of a basic dial-up connection for broadband access more than doubled between September 2001 and October 2003, growing from 9.9 million to 22.4 million. Underlying this growth is an evolution in the way people are connecting to the Internet.  One in five (19.9 percent) U.S. households and over one-third (36.5 percent) of Internet households now have a high-speed connection, while the number of U.S. households using dial-up service declined by almost 13 percent between 2001 and 2003

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