It seems like everyone is on the Internet these days, whether it’s at home, work or even mobile phones. Technology is expanding frequently, but how is the U.S. doing?
Nielsen Media reported that about 221 million consumers have Internet access in the U.S. According to a Leichtman Research Survey in 2007, nearly three quarters of households subscribe to an Internet service provider and a high-speed (broadband account) which is over 70 percent of online home subscribers. Although U.S. is the 12th in broadband penetration worldwide; according to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, studies from Leichtman in January 2008 show that broadband penetration grew from 86.79 percent to 87.49 from December 2007. If the current rates continue to increase by 0.7 per month, The Leichtman Research Group predicts that broadband penetration among active internet users will reach 90 percent by May 2008.
But what is the importance of having broadband internet versus narrowband? And what is the difference?
Blogger ydogg from MobilePhoneBlog.org couldn’t have explained the importance of broadband any clearer:
Why is broadband wireless important? Well, if you’re currently on a broadband connection on your desktop, you probably already know the answer. If you’re still on dial-up at home, one analogy I can use is to think of highway traffic. As a Seattelite, we experience some of the worst traffic in the country. Dial-up is like driving in traffic during rush-hour where it is not uncommon to take over an hour to go under 10 miles on our highways. Broadband, however, is like driving on the same highway in the middle of the night when there is no traffic.
Social networking has also been popular within Internet use in recent years and so have third-generation mobile phones; phones with wireless Internet accessibility. There are nearly 3.3 billion cell phone subscribers in the U.S., 2.3 billion (50 million) of the subscribers are using mobile internet for multimedia uploads and social networking according to Informa Telecoms in a New York Times article. For example, T-Mobile Sidekick phones are popular among teens and young adults. These phones have features where consumers can instant message others online, send multimedia and have high speed internet access, especially when they can’t get to a nearby computer to check their MySpace pages. It also seems like there is a direct correlation between broadband penetration in the U.S., mobile phones with Internet access and social networking.
**The Numbers Assignment**
