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Broadband Majority in US
TheSync writes "NetworkWorldFusion has a report that the majority of US Internet users now connect using broadband, according to NetRatings. There are 63 million broadband users (51%) and 61 million (49%) dial-up users in the US. Broadband was most prevalent among people ages 18 to 20."
Wow, I'm really amazed people agreed to do this. The FA doesn't mention it, but I wonder if they were compensated in some manner.
No way in hell I'd want someone to know how often I visit tubgirl..
But seriously, in my mind this is akin to hardware "spyware" - I wonder if these same people would agree to having a key logger installed.. Maybe this is one of the reasons spyware is so prolific? Maybe some people just don't care what the corporate overloads know about them?
(I never said they were smart.....)
feh. stuff.
That age range is popular because internet and email is needed for schooling. Many college students live off campus, but need a decent connection to the internet. Many universities have much of the coursework and homework assignments online. Email is also the preferred communication method
NetRatings, based in New York and Milpitas, Calif., used a panel of 50,000 participants selected through calls to randomly generated phone numbers. Each participating household provides a profile of the users in the home, and a device connected to each Internet-linked PC in the home logs where those users go on the Internet. Users have to log in to identify themselves when they start using the computer, Ryan said.
With that said, is it safe to assume that the people that agreed to do this would be generally more savvy than generic dialup population? Is it also safe to assume that people with broadband are generally more interested in the Internet and computers than their dialup counterparts? (and possibly therefore more likely to participate when they got that "random" call?) Granted there's huge cross-over, I may be over-generalizing, and the assumption doesn't accomidate to users that have "no other choice" than dialup, but how accurate could this possibly be?
-Aaron
My name is Aaron Landry, and I approve this message.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. A basic understanding of statistics indicates that you can have 95% confidence in your results with as small a sample as about 1,000 people. 50,000 is just hedging the bet by increasing the sample fiftyfold; the confidence interval there is likely even larger.
However, it's very likely with the 51%/49% results here that, due to the margin of error, there isn't a detectable majority of either broadband or dialup users. The statistics for qualitative questions like "what kind of Internet do you use" are a little fuzzy (i.e. way beyond what I learned in my AP=basic-college-intro-101-level Stats), but the principle is the same.
I would absoutely trust that -about- 49% and 51% of Internet users surveyed use dialup and broadband, respectively, but I'm not sure that there's a detectable majority.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
A lot of people I know don't do anything more than read email, or at best get the latest scores for their favorite sports.
It's hard to sell these folks on the idea of paying 5 times as much by telling them it'll be "faster", when their entire online experience lasts a half hour a month.
The "killer app" for broadband hasn't really materialized yet.
That said, I could never go back to dialup.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
In one of those glass-half-empty deals- I'd say it's running at its fastest speed ever, because of all that garbage.
Guess what? Nobody who matters cares. The internet isn't run on ideals and dreamy visions- it's run by backbone companies who, just like the telephone companies with telemarkets- profit from every single bit of it.
Do you really think backbones are going to chase after their customers? Nope. They're going to happily invoice for every bit of it- whether the customer ISP is paying by the byte or needs to upgrade to a faster line, either way- the backbone provider wins. I don't think you'll see them leaping for joy at anti-spam and spyware laws- they'll claim free speech this or that, but in reality be only concerned about loosing traffic that they can bill for.
If bandwidth used by DDoS's and spam couldn't be charged for, the problem would have been stamped out a long, long, long time ago by ISPs and backbones. They have the ability to stop zombies and whatnot- they just don't give a shit.
Please help metamoderate.
The report says that the second largest group of users (at 58%) were children between the ages of 2 and 11. It is not as if these users can subscribe to a broadband connection by themselves! I wonder who consumes such numbers. Perhaps these numbers are used to target ads to the right group - but that would mean using services like AOL (shudder).
-- Off to build a bridge between the twin peaks of Mt. Kilimanjaro.
I'd say the sample size more than sufficient. The problem is how they selected participants. If anyone you know uses dial up you'll immediately know what I mean. Try calling them. The phone is always fucking busy! NetRatings hang up, and additional numbers are called until they get the 50K participants. It's online natural selection, favoring those who do not have dialup! :)
Urge to post... fading... fading... RISING!... fading... fading... gone.
People don't move to rural areas to get away from the technology, they go there to get away from the cities.
Do you know what a side effect of getting away from the cities is? Getting away from the technology. The cost for installing broadband is dependent more on the area covered than the people covered. It's trivial to run cable to 30 houses when they're all on the same block. When they're each 0.5 mi away from each other, it's not so easy, and the return on investment goes to the shitter.
When you move out of densely populated areas, you should not expect the same level of service, be it sewers, trash collection, police and fire protection, utility service, transportation options, retail access, etc. You pay lower property taxes out there for a reason.
It might not be that simple. Imagine if the backbone providers did exercise this supposed power and used it to squish zombies and other Internet Undead. Something tells me there would be a hue and cry about excessive corporate power over the Internet.
Backbone providers likely see it as a utility. You can use electricity to power a hospital or power a meth lab. It's essentially out of their purvue, and they likely want to stay out of policing what people do with the bandwidth they provide. It's good business, and it's probably better for the rest of us, too.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I like how they don't even bother to define the term. Do they mean "faster than 56k", or do they mean "always on", or what?