Study shows why over 30 percent of USA never uses ‘Net

Over a third of people in the United States do not access broadband at home, and nearly the same percentage "do not use the Internet anywhere," according to a new survey released by the Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration. That's "not anywhere" as in not at home or work—no Facebook, no texting, no tweets, no e-mail, nothing. It's a six percent drop from two years ago, but still a big chunk of America.

"The report confirms that at the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, too many Americans still rely on slow, narrowband Internet access or do not use the Internet at all," said NTIA chief Lawrence Strickling in the report's foreward. "Although life without high speed Internet service seems unimaginable for many Americans, for too many others, broadband is still unattainable."

Three years ago Strickling's lament might have come off as bit precious. If people don't want to engage in social networking, blogs, YouTube, P2P, or e-mail, so what? And a Pew Internet & American Life project released a year ago indicated that two-thirds of broadband-less Americans said that they didn't even want it.

But this document tells a different story. It comes as applying for a job or going to college has become difficult or impossible without access to a broadband-powered device. A sizeable slice of those surveyed still say they're not interested in the 'Net. A majority, however, give more troubling reasons for their absence from cyberspace. They don't have a good enough computer, they confide—or they have no computer at all. Or they feel they lack the skills to go online. And big percentages of them complain that broadband at home is too expensive.

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The NTIA's survey, it should be noted, came as Federal Communications Commission Chair Julius Genachowski gave a sneak preview of the agency's National Broadband Plan on Tuesday. The document will call for 100 million homes to have 100Mbps Internet access, Genachowski said, and the US should have the world's largest "ultra-high-speed broadband testbeds." Plus Internet adoption rates should hit at least 90 percent—which is way beyond what the NTIA says we've got right now.

Better numbers

NTIA's report, titled Digital Nation: 21st Century America's Progress Towards Universal Broadband Internet Access, is based on a commissioned Census Bureau survey of about 54,000 households and 129,000 citizens. Overall it crunches numbers very similar to those that the FCC disclosed on Friday, and they all show penetration growth. 75.8 million US households use some kind of high speed Internet service in 2009, NTIA says, which is 63.5 percent of households (the FCC located 77 million "fixed-location" broadband connections in 2008). And last year, the "incidence of Internet use anywhere," as the NTIA puts it, inside or beyond the home, came to 68.4 percent of Americans—almost 198 million people age three or older. That's a significant boost from 2007's total: 62.4 percent.

The percentage of people who never use the Internet has also dropped, the report concludes—from 37.6 percent in 2007 to 31.6 percent in 2009. But that's still almost a third of the country.

Less "not interested"

What's telling are the specific responses those polled gave for why they don't access the 'Net. 47.2% of 2009 respondents still said "don't need/not interested." But 22.3% said they felt that they didn't have a good enough computer—or any computer at all. 8.6% called the Internet "too expensive." Over four percent cited "lack of skill."

And when Americans were asked why they have no Internet connection at home, the "don't need/Not interested" response dropped to 16.7% of those polled, while "too expensive" jumped to 38.9%. And when home dialup Internet users were asked why they don't upgrade to broadband, the not interested crowd shrank to 7.3% while the too expensive set ballooned to 41.3%.

These numbers don't differ by much when NTIA compared rural and urban responses: 22.3 percent of rural area residents called a broadband upgrade too costly; 27.6 percent of city dwellers reported the same. But a sizeable number of rural Americans also checked the "not available" category—11.1%.

All this data confirms the convention wisdom—when people get a taste of the 'Net, they want more of it. This report only makes the big question even bigger: how do we get it to them? Thus do policy wonks everywhere await the FCC's National Broadband Plan, scheduled to appear in pdf form on a webpage near you on March 17.