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Americans Abandoning Wired Home Internet, Shows Study (seattletimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Americans as a whole are growing less likely than before to have residential broadband, according to new data on a sample of 53,000 Americans. In plain English, they're abandoning their wired Internet for a mobile-data-only diet -- and if the trend continues, it could reflect a huge shift in the way we experience the Web. The study, conducted for the Commerce Department by the U.S. Census Bureau, partly upholds what we already knew. Low-income Americans are still one of the biggest demographics to rely solely on their phones to get online. Today nearly a third of households earning less than $25,000 a year exclusively use mobile Internet to browse the Web. That's up from 16 percent in 2013. They're often cited as evidence of a digital divide; families with little money to afford a home Internet subscription must resort to free Wi-Fi at libraries and even McDonald's to do homework, look for jobs and find information. But people with higher incomes are ditching their wired Internet access at similar or even faster rates. In 2013, 8 percent of households making between $50,000 and $75,000 a year were mobile-only. Fast-forward a couple of years, and that figure is 18 percent. Seventeen percent of households making between $75,000 and $100,000 are mobile-only now, compared with 8 percent two years ago. And 15âpercent of households earning more than $100,000 are mobile-only, versus 6 percent in 2013.
Even though gaming is a big industry, the % of the population who plays latency-sensitive games is very small. Most gaming is mobile Candy Crush style games, that can tolerate high latency connections, or also online but non-realtime freemium games.
I have had three different WISPs, without moving. The first one used WiFi gear and was bought out by the second one which used something based on cellular technology. They were being lames so I switched to another WISP which is, sadly, also very lame. They just instituted caps so now I'm paying $80 for 200GB/mo and 7.5 Mbps down, and I can pay more for more cap but I can't get more bandwidth. I was originally paying $50 for no cap and 5 Mbps down. The WISP which bought out that WISP charged $50 and provided 4-5 Mbps down, and then later wanted to institute a 90GB cap which is when I left.
My ping is usually pretty good except at peak times. Netflix buffers pretty hard during some peaks, other times it's fine. Gaming is usually pretty good. Sometimes during the winter they fail hard, but I think that's mostly related to their crap antique equipment. I have recently been upgraded to something slightly more modern, but I haven't had much inclement weather since so I don't know how things have changed.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yes, but unless the usage is very large, it's generally cheaper to just buy the mobile data plan and not also have a home ISP.
Usage doesn't have to be that large. One hour of HD video is about 1.2 GB of data. Even a standard YouTube video at 480p is 400 MB for an hour of video. Removing wired Internet access will probably save around $50 per month, which could pay for an extra 10 GB or so from a mobile data provider like Verizon. That is only 8 hours of full HD video or 25 hours of low-res YouTube video per month. Neither of those would be considered excessive.
I can understand why a large number of people have switched to mobile data only over the past few years. That only recently became a serious option. But I have a hard time believing this trend will continue. Mobile data providers would have to start offering closer to 10x the current data volumes for the same price before it could handle the amount of content viewing needs of the average household (which if you believe YouTube marketing watch on average of 25+ hours of YouTube per month).
My wife for instance would never be considered a mobile power user, but when we had problems with our WiFi equipment she went through over 3 GB of data in a single weekend. That was almost entirely YouTube, Netflix, and Snapchat.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
It's true that population densities are very low here, and that it is more difficult to connect everyone up as a result. However, it's also true that we could be doing a lot more in that regard.
I see you are responding (in advance) to the lame excuse routinely offered by apologists for "Whatever the Corporations Give Us Must Be the Best in The World! Because FREEDOM!"
The poor average Internet service in the U.S., both in wired broadband penetration and internet connection speeds (and metrics like cost per bandwidth), cannot be explained (or even correlated with) population density. The U.S. is 82.4% urbanized for one thing, which means that this entire urban population lives in a small area at high densities and should have data service comparable or better than the rest of the world, especially in light of the relatively high U.S. average income. The population density in U.S. urban areas is 2400 people per square mile, far higher than the average population density of the nations with the best Internet service (like South Korea), and are in addition highly regionalized (i.e. are in effect huge megacities) so that they do form population and wealth concentrations similar to those top Internet nations.
Instead we are far behind such very low density countries like Sweden, Norway and Finland in all BB metrics (our urbanization rate is not much different from these countries, BTW). Canada, with a lower rate of urbanization that the U.S., and a population density about 1/10 that of the U.S. does better in broadband access, and has nearly identical data rates.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Don't think so. You can get good coverage in Europe in thinly populated places too. It's the competition, plus strict rules, e.g. you have to provide service to 99% of the population 3 years after you get your frequency slot license, or you loose it and forfeit the billions you paid for the license.
And yes, nordic countries like Norway (14 humans/sq km) Sweden (24 h/sqkm) and Finland (18h/sqkm) do have better mobile coverage and prices, while having a lower population density than the US (35h/sqkm).
There is almost no place in the world which is populated which has population densities as low as the USA.
Finland's population density according to World Bank's population density table is half that of the United States, with Sweden between them. Yet I'm told Sweden and Finland have better home Internet connectivity than the United States.
They have been paid billions of tax dollars to cover the cost of running cable in rural locations. Instead of getting free cable out and making money starting at day 1 they pocketed it as a windfall.
Just because no prosecutor has taken the corporate overlords to task does not negate their actions.
They have a monopoly
Where is this said? In many countries ISPs were forced to allow 3rd parties to piggy back off their network at a reasonable price determined by the cost of upkeep and expansion.
get subsidised to install lines and have a captive audience
Although I know there are states and provinces that have offered subsidies for expansion in less dense areas, these areas still end up last on the list to handle. I worked closely with a large Canadian ISP (Telus) and installations in rural areas are often far more complicated than just putting equipment in closed boxes. For one, until about 2006, DSL modems didn't too well in ranges exceeding 5km. Even 3km runs could be difficult to tune properly. Cable modems had a bit more range but I'm not sure how much more.
Where in hell are you getting a 100+year ROI? Are you dense?
In Canada rural areas are defined as having 150 people per square kilometer. This means a DSL system that covers 5KM can handle about 25 SQKM. This means a population of 3750. If you assume at least 3 people (right from census Canada) live in one household. That leaves you with a potential of 1250 connections. If you get 50% of these house holds to connect that leaves you with 625 connections.
The cost alone to bring fiber to the service center to serve those 25 SQKM is between $300k and $500k. Add $100k for the hardware and general setup. If we base it at $400k total install, it's $6400 per household. This means it will take almost 14 years just to pay for the initial installations at $40/month. Now if add maintenance cost, home installation cost (which is usually amortized in the monthly), tech support and running cost you are at least looking at 20 years before you make profit.
This is assuming cost/month doesn't go down because that will drive up the number of years to break even. Additionally the numbers we used are probably too optimistic since not all rural areas will have the maximum of 150 / SQKM.
His figure of 100 is exaggerated but his point was valid. The ROI isn't appealing by any means which is why government often subsidies the installation and makes it mandatory for installations to occur within a set period.
Hey, US antitrust laws are quite strict as well. We just don't enforce them.
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