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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, 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. And, most people will never give up their mobile data access.
Followed by this article: 98% of Americans abandoning broadband say that lousy ISPs were the primary reason for doing so. "Even 4G LTE is cheaper than the rippoff prices" said one user. "Verizon wouldn't offer us any FIOS, so this was our only non-DSL option." another claimed. In other news, Google Fiber and FIOS are holding onto 90% of users.
If the average user is being asked if they use wired broadband, but use wifi they'll say no even though their wifi router is being fed by it.
I'm getting tired of this argument. The ISP's and telco's have been subsidized to the tune of billions by taxpayers, for no benefit. The only times that service seems to improve is when someone like google or the local government says that they are start offering fiber to an area, then every ISP/telco/local monoploy starts suing and claiming that they are going to upgrade. If the locals drop the project due to lawsuits, then the telcos drop their improvements as well. It's not a metter of size of the US. It's a matter of pure greed.