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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.
Yes it is. But Wireless is more convenient. And most of us have some sort of wireless data plans on our devices anyways, so even though broadband is cheaper and faster. It would be a redundant expense for some people.
Myself I have a cheap data plan, enough for a few google searches and the occasional youtube video while I am waiting. And I do most of my browsing off of Broadband. But I keep an eye on the rates, Performance and coverage. I wouldn't mind dropping broadband for my home, if I got a good enough data plan wirelessly.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Huh? The USA has third world connectivity? Who told you that?
It's not quite true, but it's very close to true. There are cities in the third world as connected as any in the USA, and in terms of overall broadband penetration and speeds the USA is only a few percentage points above its nearest third-world neighbor (in terms of chart position.)
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm kind of curious about the non-cell-carrier wireless ISP usage data.
For instance, I use Sat. Internet (because the ISPs are too cheap/lazy to run broadband to my rural-as-hell property).
I also have used, and know that folks still use wireless ISPs (wherein a unidirectional antenna is bolted to the roof of the house and pointed to a distant tower). I last used it from 2000-2005 by way of Sprint Broadband, and got T1 speeds up and down - from a tower 35 miles away. Wasn't perfect for FPS gaming, but was quite usable in spite of that. Pretty sure that speeds have gone up since then.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
A little less than 100 years ago, rural customers in the same area had problems convincing the market to actually provide electricity to the area. Instead of completely abandoning the area to be left behind by time, the federal government established a corporation to generate and supply electricity to the rural population of the Tennessee valley. While it faced many of the same libertarian arguments, it has been quite successful in keeping the area economically viable. And all that while being a careful compromise between free market principles and those crazy socialist visions of a better tomorrow. Crazy what happens when people work together.
In Nordic Countries it's 25–35 EUR for unlimited data at maximum LTE speeds. People often say this is because these countries are smaller, but I don't really buy that argument as smaller scale also more often than not means more expensive, not to mention the excessive telcom regulations. 100/100Mbps to 1Gbps land connections often range from 10–50 EUR.
Now that I think of it, maybe it's the regulations that keep the prices down. Antitrust laws are quite strict.
-SR
If you've never traveled across it (not flown across -- traveled across) or you've never been to the US at all and just know what LA looks like from the movies, do yourself a favor and take a look at a map first, and compare the scale to $your_country. The US is huge. And especially the western half of the country, where most areas with residents were built in the last 100 years, and most of the rest is completely open land.
"Internet access" for the downtown core of a major city, for the suburbs and residential areas outside of dense urban zones, for small towns, and for rural areas 3 miles from your nearest neighbor mean *vastly* different things. Infrastructure investment and wired vs wireless communications in some areas carry tradeoffs involving public safety, reliability, access, and available technology.
So before you comment, take that into account. Thanks.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
My home is almost exactly 24 miles from the *center* of the village and about another 68 miles to the center of a reasonable sized town. I had to pay for a CO and the physical wire for the upgrade. The teleco put the lines in at their expense for labor. A neighbor chipped in and paid for a mile's worth of line beyond my place - so that they could connect.
Of the six residencies that wanted the service, we all now have reasonably speedy DSL. I had it done as the house was being built - I retired there in 2008, I was in the new house for Christmas. I could have gone with cable, believe it or not. The price would actually have been about the same. I opted for DSL for some fairly obvious reasons.
It's the telephone line, they have to keep it maintained. I can use any provider I want, I'm only limited to those who are willing to provide service - so I can use any ISP that I feel like and I have switched when I wanted to. There are a number of legislative protections, a public utility commission, and an active consumer protections body that care about phone lines in very rural Maine.
The list goes on.
Anyhow, cable would have been about the same price to install and would have been faster. Though, I now get faster speeds on DSL than cable had said I'd get back in 2007 when I was doing the leg work. I pay for 10/.75 and get 14.5/1.5 and have three disparate connections, each gets that speed. I'm told that they're actually (they've gotta look good on paper - and I know several of the actual engineers personally now) running fiber out by the end of this year. I will not be switching to fiber. I will order fiber but I'll retain at least one of the DSL pipes.
Why? I've had the copper wires on the ground, in snowbanks, with trees on top of it, *plowed by the plow truck* into the snowbank after getting knocked down, and still had reasonable connectivity speeds. Fiber will not do that. They'll be hanging the fiber from the poles and not trenching it. So, I'll be keeping my DSL.
It wasn't all that expensive to have the lines brought in. It was a one time cost and was just about $30,000, in 2008 dollars. That might sound like a lot but I've used dial-up and the dial-up in the area was actually usually less than 14. kb/sec 4 in true throughput. I feel that it was worth every penny. Given the magnitudes of the differences between those speeds and that I consider my time worth money, I might even be able to say that it has exceeded paying off the investment. Even if the measurement is sheer joy, it has paid itself off - tenfold or more.
I'm not sure my pricing is all that accurate. It's accurate in that it is what I paid but they were also doing upgrades in the area at that time. They were already buying the stuff and I personally negotiated the deal with some input from a friend in the business. I'm given to understand that I paid *only* for the lines that were replaced and the CO ("central office" which is really just a big metal box) and, I think, a couple of things that amplify the signal - they put some small boxes on some of the poles. Obviously, this is not my forte.
But, I'm told that I paid *only* for the cost of material and that I paid the same price they paid for said material. The labor was not charged on the bill, not itemized at least, and that was part of the agreement because I was able to get others to commit to signing up. The folks who wanted internet service were more than happy to agree to sign up when they found out that I'd be doing the investing. They're actually good people but i didn't really know them then. It's a very, very small sub-community with those six residencies spread out over about a 2-3 mile stretch of road. The last one out is not interested in phone, 'net, or even mains electricity so the wires stop before they get to his house - as do the electrical wires.
At any rate, that was one of the wisest purchases that I ever made. I know others who have paid quite a bit more but they just took the quoted price and paid that. I actually went into the
"So long and thanks for all the fish."