Slashdot Mirror
FCC: Broadband Usage Has Tripled Since 2001
Brainsur writes "According to Newsfactor more and more Americans are migrating to high-speed Internet service, with the number of broadband subscribers tripling in recent years, according to a comprehensive report from the Federal Communications Commission. The U.S. is making progress in delivering broadband access underserved areas, the report states. The report also says that the number of users of broadband services (speeds exceeding 200 kbps in both directions) soared to 28 million in December 2003 from 9.6 million in 2001."
A lot of people have 200+ kbps uplinks that are artificially capped in the realm of modem speeds by their ISPs. I wonder how many of these have been counted in this survey?
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
t's an interesting thing. There's a huge difference between broadband and POTS (or even ISDN). It just changes the whole connected experience. More and more internet content is predicated on users having broadband access and is not accessible to us 56K'ers. Giant apps., huge patches, streaming video and all the rest of it are just not a possibility for a vast number of internet users in much of the world (probably the majority). In my country broadband is available in some places but is prohibitively expensive for private individuals. Two days (and considerable expense) to download a new kernel versus 20 minutes or so. It is really creating a two tier system with a 56K underclass - sort of a Two Nations scenario.
..........availability. What is the amount of households that actually have access to broadband, that previously didn't in 2001? I know availability has been a real kink in most people's plans to get high speed internet access.
-Randy
Hm, I get 1.5Mbps down, 128kbps up from Verizon DSL. Does this mean I don't have broadband?
No. You don't.
Somewhere along the line, the word "broadband" got a legal definition. Because of all the Peer-to-Peer stuff, though, most ISPs prefer to severely limit the upstream. This is why nearly all companies advertise their internet connections as "high-speed" rather than broadband now.
-Grym
I wonder how many users signed up for broadband particularly for Xbox Live. I've got several customers at the store where I work (we sell games) that discuss Xbox Live and how they're considering signing up for broadband particularly for this purpose.