Effect of Geography on High Speed Internet
In general, home broadband adoption rates vary in ways similar to overall Internet adoption rates, although there are some important geographic differences. As shown in Figure 9, rates of dial-up usage are roughly the same across geographic regions. However, broadband rates are higher in the West and Northeast than in the South and Midwest.
As shown in Table 3, broadband connections at home are less prevalent in rural America (24.7 percent) than in urban areas (40.4 percent), particularly in central cities (40.9 percent). The 2003 CPS supplement found that in rural areas, subscribership for both cable modems (14.3 percent) and DSL (9.2 percent) is lower than national averages (20.6 percent and 15.2 percent, respectively). While broadband usage has grown significantly in all areas since the previous survey, the rural-urban differential continues. However, wireless technologies such as satellite and MMDS are promising technologies for increasing broadband use in rural areas. They are better suited at present than cable or DSL for providing high speed Internet access in areas where population density is low. Even at this early stage of wireless deployment, rural households are slightly more likely than urban households to have satellite or MMDS.
Table 3: Type of Home Internet Connection by Rural/Urban, 2003
(Percent of Households with Internet)
|
Total US |
Rural |
Urban |
Central City |
|
Dial-up |
62.8 |
74.7 |
58.9 |
58.4 |
|
Cable Modem |
20.6 |
14.3 |
22.6 |
21.1 |
|
DSL |
15.2 |
9.2 |
17.2 |
19.1 |
|
Satellite and Fixed Wireless (MMDS) |
0.7 |
1.2 |
0.6 |
0.7 |
|
Other |
0.8 |
0.7 |
0.8 |
0.8 |
This situation is not new. As explained in the April 2000 report co-authored by the Departments of Agriculture and Commerce, cable modem and DSL technologies are less likely to serve rural areas for varied reasons. Cable modem service may not extend to remote customers, who often do not have cable systems built out to their homes. Additionally, the cost of building out cable modem service is higher in rural and remote areas, where the subscriber base is low. DSL is similarly hampered by distance as loops extending more than 15,000 to 18,000 feet from the central switching office are less likely to be able to support DSL-based advanced services without significant cost increases. The report concluded that “[t]he deployment of both technologies declines with population density. [C]able modems and DSL services, although increasingly available in rural towns, are still far more available in larger metropolitan areas…. As a result, residents in rural areas will generally be the last to receive service.”
The difficulty that residents of rural areas face in obtaining broadband is illustrated in the reasons that dial-up households give for not having moved to higher-speed service. As shown in Figure 10, dial-up Internet households most often cite “Don’t Need/Not Interested” (44.1 percent) and “Too Expensive” (38.9 percent) as the main reasons they do not have higher speed access at home. Only 9.8 percent cited that high-speed service was not available.
However, there are major differences in the responses between rural and urban households. Figure 11 shows that while only 4.7 percent of urban Internet households believed that broadband was not available, 22.1 percent of rural Internet households surveyed believed that they did not have broadband available to them.
Indeed, differences in availability may account for much of the disparity in broadband use between rural and urban areas. For example, if dial-up households citing “Lack of Availability” as the primary reason for not having higher-speed access were added to those currently having broadband, then rural and urban households would have broadband Internet connections in roughly the same proportion (41.2 percent and 43.1 percent for rural and urban, respectively).
Tags: wireless, broad band, cable modem, high speed internet access. broadband, DSL. T1
High Speed Internet Tags: broadband internet, high speed internet
