We should take a vote here. Sorry Dante buddy, but I say that is exteremely high. No way that many have high speed yet. Just a ploy to try and get those that don't have high speed think they need to go ahead and get up to date it like everyone else.........
April 18, 2004, 11:22PM
No need for more speed
Most ignore faster Internet connections
By MATT RICHTEL
New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO -- High-speed Internet access is being adopted as quickly as any modern technology has ever been, including television. So what makes Dana Jenkins think she can resist this trend?
She is one of the tens of millions of Americans seemingly immune to the lure of more speed and satisfied with dial-up services. In fact, she is in the majority. Most Americans who surf the Internet do so by dialing in on regular telephone lines, despite the rapidly narrowing price gap between high-speed and dial-up connections.
People such as Jenkins are practical consumers content to pay for a service that is less than optimal, and at times even frustratingly slow, because they say greater speed is not worth the trouble of starting over with a new telecommunications provider and getting a new e-mail address, even if the added cost is small.
"I resent it," Jenkins, 61, an avid Internet user in Marietta, Ga., said of the mild pressure she feels to get a high-speed connection. She pays $21.95 a month to dial into the Net -- mostly to do research for the doctorate in communications that she is working toward -- and said paying even $10 more for a faster connection would feel wasteful.
"I don't do gaming. I don't download a lot of graphics," she said. "For the money I would spend, I don't need it."
Those are words that can give high-technology industry executives chills. They have proclaimed the spread of high-speed, or broadband, connections as integral to the industry's growth, essential to American competitiveness and indispensable to consumers. Even President Bush jumped into the fray last month, calling for affordable, universal high-speed access by 2007.
Up to now, the market for high-speed connections has been dominated by the young, educated, affluent and tech-savvy. In some circles, it is considered not just functional but an essential bit of modernity, like knowing what happened on The Sopranos or that Diesel refers to jeans, not fuel. Some users of dial-up sheepishly acknowledge that they avoid admitting their low network speeds when they are with their better-connected friends.
The situation is likely to change as more users move to broadband. In 2003, 23 million households had high-speed access, up from 16 million the year before, according to the Yankee Group, a research firm. In 2003, 51 million American households connected to the Internet through a dial-up connection, down from 55 million a year before, the firm reported.
A typical dial-up connection delivers information at 56 kilobytes per second; broadband connections are five to 25 times faster.
In practical terms, the performance depends largely on what task a person is doing. E-mail, for example, can take about the same amount of time to download because it is a small amount of data. But high-speed connections can make a huge difference for the digital transfer of graphics, elaborate Web pages and video.
For those uses, the denizens of the dial-up world have learned to wait.
"I bring a newspaper and sit and read," said Alex Pope of Berkeley, Calif., explaining how he passes time waiting to download data, such as the music programs for upcoming symphonies, on dial-up.
Pope, 74, a retired lawyer, does not have the option millions of dial-up users have: broadband connections at work that allow them to surf the Internet quickly when they need to. If office connections are counted, 54 percent of Americans have high-speed access either at home or at work, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a nonprofit research group.
While many dial-up users cite cost as one reason to stick with their existing service, the price of high-speed service is becoming more affordable.
Dial-up costs can range from $10 a month from discount companies to $21.95 a month for services from big operators such as EarthLink and MSN. Cable modem service costs $40 to $45 a month, according to the Yankee Group. Telephone digital subscriber line service can cost $35 a month, but the price typically drops to $30 a month if users also buy long-distance and local phone service from the same phone company.
The industry has a label for people who have not yet moved into the fast lane: prime prospects. Verizon Communications, the largest U.S. telephone company, has a marketing campaign to convince consumers that high-speed access is affordable and trouble-free to set up.
Verizon's marketing is not convincing everybody. In a survey taken in February, the Pew project found that 60 percent of dial-up users said they were not interested in switching to broadband, roughly the same result as a February 2003 survey. According to the survey, 47 percent of men wanted to switch, compared with 34 percent of women, a notable gender difference.
The Yankee Group has reported a number of differences between dial-up and broadband users: 47 percent of young unmarried people have broadband, compared with 30 percent of young married couples. It found that broadband has the highest penetration among upper-middle-class households, suggesting that price continues to be a factor in consumer decisions to get high-speed connections.
No need for more speed
Most ignore faster Internet connections
By MATT RICHTEL
New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO -- High-speed Internet access is being adopted as quickly as any modern technology has ever been, including television. So what makes Dana Jenkins think she can resist this trend?
She is one of the tens of millions of Americans seemingly immune to the lure of more speed and satisfied with dial-up services. In fact, she is in the majority. Most Americans who surf the Internet do so by dialing in on regular telephone lines, despite the rapidly narrowing price gap between high-speed and dial-up connections.
People such as Jenkins are practical consumers content to pay for a service that is less than optimal, and at times even frustratingly slow, because they say greater speed is not worth the trouble of starting over with a new telecommunications provider and getting a new e-mail address, even if the added cost is small.
"I resent it," Jenkins, 61, an avid Internet user in Marietta, Ga., said of the mild pressure she feels to get a high-speed connection. She pays $21.95 a month to dial into the Net -- mostly to do research for the doctorate in communications that she is working toward -- and said paying even $10 more for a faster connection would feel wasteful.
"I don't do gaming. I don't download a lot of graphics," she said. "For the money I would spend, I don't need it."
Those are words that can give high-technology industry executives chills. They have proclaimed the spread of high-speed, or broadband, connections as integral to the industry's growth, essential to American competitiveness and indispensable to consumers. Even President Bush jumped into the fray last month, calling for affordable, universal high-speed access by 2007.
Up to now, the market for high-speed connections has been dominated by the young, educated, affluent and tech-savvy. In some circles, it is considered not just functional but an essential bit of modernity, like knowing what happened on The Sopranos or that Diesel refers to jeans, not fuel. Some users of dial-up sheepishly acknowledge that they avoid admitting their low network speeds when they are with their better-connected friends.
The situation is likely to change as more users move to broadband. In 2003, 23 million households had high-speed access, up from 16 million the year before, according to the Yankee Group, a research firm. In 2003, 51 million American households connected to the Internet through a dial-up connection, down from 55 million a year before, the firm reported.
A typical dial-up connection delivers information at 56 kilobytes per second; broadband connections are five to 25 times faster.
In practical terms, the performance depends largely on what task a person is doing. E-mail, for example, can take about the same amount of time to download because it is a small amount of data. But high-speed connections can make a huge difference for the digital transfer of graphics, elaborate Web pages and video.
For those uses, the denizens of the dial-up world have learned to wait.
"I bring a newspaper and sit and read," said Alex Pope of Berkeley, Calif., explaining how he passes time waiting to download data, such as the music programs for upcoming symphonies, on dial-up.
Pope, 74, a retired lawyer, does not have the option millions of dial-up users have: broadband connections at work that allow them to surf the Internet quickly when they need to. If office connections are counted, 54 percent of Americans have high-speed access either at home or at work, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a nonprofit research group.
While many dial-up users cite cost as one reason to stick with their existing service, the price of high-speed service is becoming more affordable.
Dial-up costs can range from $10 a month from discount companies to $21.95 a month for services from big operators such as EarthLink and MSN. Cable modem service costs $40 to $45 a month, according to the Yankee Group. Telephone digital subscriber line service can cost $35 a month, but the price typically drops to $30 a month if users also buy long-distance and local phone service from the same phone company.
The industry has a label for people who have not yet moved into the fast lane: prime prospects. Verizon Communications, the largest U.S. telephone company, has a marketing campaign to convince consumers that high-speed access is affordable and trouble-free to set up.
Verizon's marketing is not convincing everybody. In a survey taken in February, the Pew project found that 60 percent of dial-up users said they were not interested in switching to broadband, roughly the same result as a February 2003 survey. According to the survey, 47 percent of men wanted to switch, compared with 34 percent of women, a notable gender difference.
The Yankee Group has reported a number of differences between dial-up and broadband users: 47 percent of young unmarried people have broadband, compared with 30 percent of young married couples. It found that broadband has the highest penetration among upper-middle-class households, suggesting that price continues to be a factor in consumer decisions to get high-speed connections.
